Cloud Computing a possible threat to users
privacy and system administrator employment
If you're employed into an IT branch an IT hobbyist or a tech, geek
you should have certainly heard about the latest trend in Internet
and Networking technologies the so called
Cloud
Computing
Most of the articles available in newspapers and online have
seriously praised and put the hopes for a better future through
cloud computing.
But is really the cloud computing as good as promised? I seriously
doubt that.
Let's think about it what is a cloud? It's a cluster of computers
which are connected to work as one.
No person can precisely say where exactly on the cluster cloud a
stored information is located (even the administrator!)
The data stored on the cluster is a property of a few single
organizations let's say microsoft, amazon etc., so we as users no
longer have a physical possession of our data (in case if we use
the cloud).
On the other hand the number of system administrators that are
needed for an administration of a huge cluster is dramatically
decreased, the every day system administrator, who needs to check a
few webservers and a mail server on daily basis, cache web data
with a squid proxy cache or just restart a server will be no longer
necessary.
Therefore about few million of peoples would have to loose their
jobs, the people necessary to administrate a cluster will be
probably no more than few thousands as the clouds are so high that
no more than few clouds will exist on the net.
The idea behind the cluster is that we the users store retrieve our
desktops and boot our operating system from the cluster.
Even loading a simple webpage will have to retrieve it's data from
the cluster.
Therefore it looks like in the future the cloud computing and the
internet are about to become one and the same thing. The internet
might become a single super cluster where all users would connect
with their user ids and do have full access to the information
inside.
Technologies like
OpenID are trying to make the user
identification uniform, I assume a similar uniform user
identication will be used in the future in a super cloud where
everybody, where entering inside will have access to his/her data
and will have the option to access any other data online.
The desire of humans and business for transperancy would probably
end up in one day, where people will want to share every single bit
of information.
Even though it looks very cool for a sci-fi movie, it's seriously
scary!
Cloud computing expenses as they're really high would be affordable
only for a multi-national corporations like
Google and
Microsoft
Therefore small and middle IT business (network building,
expanding, network and server system integration etc.) would
gradually collapse and die.
This are only a few small tiny bit of concerns but in reality the
problems that cloud computing might create are a way more
severe.
We the people should think seriously and try to oppose cloud
computing, while we still can! It might be even a good idea if a
special legislation that is aming at limiting cloud computing can
be integrated and used only inside the boundary of a prescribed
limitations.
Institutions like the European Parliament should be more concerned
about the issues which the use of cloud computing will bring, EU
legislation should very soon be voted and bounding contracts stop
clouds from expanding and taking over the middle size IT
business.