It has been my premise that the cloud is not ready for prime time for a while now but actual studies done proving yea or nay for the cloud are hard to come by. I suspect the cloud people deliberately choose to avoid any proof of concept. Why the opposing side does not have more readily available information is done for a reason as they surely have had to do internal studies at the least. I think they know things they would rather not talk about. “Windows Secrets” is a newsletter I have subscribed to for some time and I recommend it to you. There are two flavors with one being free with abbreviated content and the other subscription for a minor fee with more content. This particular article was from my copy of their paid content and quoted here with permission. First off here is a link to “Windows Secrets”. http://windowssecrets.com/ And here is a link to the article of interest. http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/sorting-out-the-revolution-in-pc-backups-part-2/
The article talks about online backups and the speed with which this can be done compared to other backup methods. What is of interest here is the relative speed of a local LAN or an additional internal or external hard drive compared to over the public ISP throughput rates. We have all heard the silly claims about how the cloud will be much quicker than anything we could do for ourselves autonomously. Claims minus proof of course.
Now I am not going to quote a lot here nor am I going to talk about methodology. The link to the article will put you in touch with a comprehensive explanation of what was done and why. Suffice it to say that there are a ton of people like me, the vast majority of all CAD CAM users I suspect, who have less than ideal conditions to work under RE data and ISP’s. The overall size of the files used for this study though is of interest to me because I can see data quickly reaching these limits when you think of CAD creation and updating and sharing between all related systems for an average days work at many major companies. The same companies who are major targets of this cloud initiative.
I fully understand the value of something that would automatically update file versions across a whole company reliably. I can’t sit here and tell you that some compelling arguments for some things to be done on the cloud don’t exist. But I can say that the infrastructure at this time and for the foreseeable future is not ready for these types of demands. And of course security which some tell me is ready. Empirical evidence in the form of daily stories about yet another breach or government sponsored intrusion into supposedly secure situations of course belies these claims.
Perhaps the most damning thing to me about this whole cloud idea is that those who propound this as the end all be all will not legally stand behind what they want you to use and they make no serious effort to produce any conclusive evidence with actual working scenarios to buttress their claims. Cost efficiency, unlimited cores for unlimited power, fire your IT staff and the rest and never a full accounting of the costs, of ALL the costs, needed to do this.
It gets back to what I was saying about the impressions Autodesk has given most all the people I talk to about their cloud intentions. If all you ever talk about is cloud this and that then why should I not presume that all you are going to do is cloud this and that in the future? In the same frame of mind if all I ever hear are wonderful claims for the cloud but somehow these claimants never produce actual case studies with all pertinent data over typical ISP conditions I have to presume they are hiding bad things.
Can any of you think of any other reason for such pervasive lack of real life studies by these cloud companies? If I had a bullet proof product I wanted to sell you I darned sure would be busy laying out facts and studies to sell you by and not just empty words of promises where the only concrete thing offered is price tags.
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