Google Pushes the Cloud

May 8, 2011

I continue to ponder the Amazon cloud failure. At ArnoldIT.com, we use a combination of methods to deliver our products and services. The Overflight “content with intent” system is a mix of on premises systems and services delivered from various service bureaus in the cloud.

To avoid failure, the trick is redundancy. When one cloud service fails, we have a way to switch to a different service. The ideal is to make this switch over automatic, but in most cases someone, including the chief silly goose, has to baby sit the service. Baby sitting, although annoying, is just one more annoying facet of today’s computing environment. The mainframe was also annoying, so maybe the whole computer thing delivers magic and annoyances.

I read with interest “Google Urges Enterprise to Go 100% Web.” The idea is one of those rah-rah notions that I find amusing. Would that life delivered 100 percent solutions. In my experience, absolutes are death and taxes. The other life activities are slippery enough to warrant Plan B, redundancy, back ups, and contingencies of various types. When I go to a restaurant, I show up. When I set up a “content with intent” system, I immerse my safe in a web of contingency planning and actions. The notion that everything we do at ArnoldIT.com should be 100 percent on the Web strikes me as premature if not wacky.

Here’s the passage that made me realize that Google may have lots of smart people, but it does have some unusual ideas for me:

Most of all, Remley [a Google employee] argued, Google’s services represent an opportunity for IT teams to unburden themselves from patching and maintaining years’ worth of legacy systems. Not only is patching an unproductive use of IT time, but most organizations wind up running about six to eight weeks behind on implementing software patches, he said.

I applaud Google’s confidence in the cloud. Nevertheless, I will put this “100 percent” admonition in the circular file under “Baloney.”

Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2011

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Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Cloud computing, Google, Marketing, News, Technology

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.