Newsletter 114

Home Resources Newsletter Archive Newsletter 114

Cookie policy

Number 114

Welcome to the July 2012 issue of Precision Matters – the Precision Design Technology (PDT) Newsletter.

Trust and The Cloud

Cloud computing is all the rage this year. It’s a bit like fashions or Formula One rules – what was in last year is just not the scene this year. Well now it’s the time for The Cloud, naturally with the capital letters.

What is The Cloud and what can it do for you? Anyone with a network will recognise the ability to store data from their computer on another computer or even on a storage device on the network, network attached storage. Many business networks use the ability to ‘map a drive’ to provide extra storage locations, away from the desktop or laptop computer, that can be efficiently backed up and secured from a central location. These solutions are the local network equivalent of The Cloud. The Cloud exists as a series of anonymous machines on the internet used to store data of all kinds.

Security Is An Issue

These storage machines connect to the internet and are therefore accessible to all, though security measures of one kind or another protect them from unwanted attention. Most of the time. A recent report from UKFast, available free at (http://www.ukfast.co.uk/cloud-security-report-email.html) asks as its title “Can You Trust The Cloud?” It makes interesting reading.

In the report, UKFast quotes a Kapersky survey indicating that “62% of IT managers claim security issues are an obstacle to the increased adoption of cloud computing”. Reports of recent high profile shortcomings, including down time at the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and data leaks from Sony PlayStation seem to support this concern.

Attractive Benefits For Business

For the average business, the benefits are attractive: infinite scalability, reduced capital expenditure, reduced maintenance commitment, increased performance and greater business flexibility.

But the security threat is only moved from internal to external. If your company has a well managed security policy, moving to The Cloud will not automatically reduce the threat. You have to shop around.

Take A While To Assess The Cloud

The Cloud may be here to stay, but it’s worth taking a little time to assess the risks and rewards before jumping on the first one that passes. To quote the report: “A move to The Cloud requires caution, vigilance, planning and design with full system backup and redundancy”. A serious case of caveat emptor.

The Newsletter Archive

If you want to review any of the previous Newsletters, they are all available at the Newsletter Archive page

Want to reproduce this article?

Yes you can, so long as you accredit it to Robin Oldman, Precision Design Technology Ltd. and attach the following biography to the article at the bottom:

Precision Design Technology, (PDT), the IT systems experts, provides world-class consultancy and solutions for IT information systems to help its customers develop affordable, high integrity software for business. Normally high-integrity software is prohibitively expensive - PDT provides a solution at a price business can afford.

Eur Ing Robin Oldman, COO at PDT, writes and blogs on behalf of the company. Robin also manages the development of the user interface for the SPECIFY4IT tool-set that bridges the gap between the client user and the system supplier.
The SPECIFY4IT tool-set is capable of delivering high-integrity business software faster and more cheaply than conventional development methods.