While reading up on BYOD and consumerization of IT, I came across some interesting statistics as well as ideas. For starters, do you know that 10 million iPads are expected to be sold this year? Amazing isn’t it? While talking to people in the industry, I also realize that this trend is becoming more and more mainstream. Am sure you would have seen a few ipads being used in meetings! Few companies have even started running BYOD campaigns internally. For the company, yes, this means lesser investments in devices and also potentially improving productivity and employee satisfaction.

However, while this is all exciting, as always, there are a few challenges that need to be overcome by IT teams. One of the biggest challenges would be the security angle. With a multitude of devices to service, it is a veritable nightmare for IT teams. Imagine having to upgrade business apps across different kinds of devices, OS’ etc. Also, allowing employees to bring in their own devices leaves IT teams with very less control and company sensitive data  could be compromised easily. So, what are some ways in which security can be enforced on this trend?

Typically, security was enforced at the end point or at the device end – your laptops have anti-virus software for instance. However, this is not really practical in the new scenario. So, companies such as Cisco are moving security to a cloud server in the back end. So, your device does not have any security software and instead when you connect to the office network, scanning happens from a cloud server. So, both consumerization of IT and cloud computing have been effectively married to provide employees with a much better work experience while taking care of company interests as well. Wonder what other technology advances we have in store for us next!

Popularity: 29% [?]

You may have read a news item yesterday on Google introducing Google Cloud Connect – a plug in for MS Office whereby an user can synch up directly with Google Office. There is no need to press Ctrl S every few minutes as the data you are typing has already been saved by Google. What more – other users can start working on this saved version and collaboratively edit making sure you do not have to go through the trouble of sending and opening attachments. Two thoughts occurred to me – one is the power of cloud computing. Google has called this as a tectonic shift from the desktop to the “Webtop” – cool!

The second thought was more sobering – now, Google is threatening Microsoft’s monopoly in the Office suite segment – something which MS has dominated for years now. The question is do you want to allow Google to access your MS office documents? Already, Google seems to know a lot about us (courtesy Gmail, google search engine etc). One wonders what this implies? And also, while Microsoft has always been accused of monopoly, don’t Google’s tactics suggest the same strategy? What do you think?

Popularity: 13% [?]

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing operating system. It enables the development of cloud based applications using Azure’s Services platform. Hosting on Azure comes at $0.12/hour while storage is at $0.15GB per month. The company claims that over 3000 apps have been developed on the platform.

Microsoft has finally embraced the cloud it appears, exemplified by a recent talk by Ballmer http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2010/03-04Cloud.mspx. A rather late entrant to this area, it will be interesting to watch how Microsoft differentiates itself against established offerings such as Amazon Web Services and Google Apps Platform.

One thing is clear, though. Cloud Computing definitely promises to be the next big thing. What was considered to be more hype than substance not so long ago is now becoming a part of enterprise strategy.

Would welcome comments and experiences on use of cloud computing.

Popularity: 9% [?]

The recent cloud computing catastrophe of T-Mobile, whose Sidekick mobile computing device lost its customers a lot of data, brings to the forefront the question of data integrity in a cloud-computing environment.  And while I agree that it is a disaster for the T-mobile customers, I feel it is not really a problem with cloud storage per se, but with cloud (or indeed any server) storage done badly.  Where ever you store your data, there should be a back-up, either automatic or otherwise.   As Martin Glassborow of StorageBod says, the Sidekick incident “should not be seen as a failure of the Cloud; it’s not! It’s the failure of a centralised service which was apparently run by incompetents! It is yet another lesson that if you only have a single copy of your data; you might as well only have no copies of your data. So if you are archiving and deleting, you better make sure that you have two copies of the archive or at least the ability to recreate that data.”

I think the advantages that cloud computing provides – offloading infrastructure and creating centralized data centres – are important enough that the cloud storage business will survive in the long run, though the T-Mobile/Sidekick/Microsoft fiasco will cause many organizations to hold back for a while.

Popularity: 9% [?]