Cloud Computing is the latest buzz-term. It is a service which for individuals or businesses which allow them to host their software, data and databases in a third party server farm. The information is then accessed over the internet. The benefits to businesses include: it is cheap, quick to set up, up-to-date, scalable and mobile.
For small businesses in rural areas this service is very attractive, you don't need technical staff to set it up for you, the supplier will fix any issues, web site hosting is not subject to the vagaries of rural internet or electricity supply and the supplier will keep it up to date.
But how safe is it?
The companies who used Amazon as a cloud supplier were not too happy in April when their cloud disappeared for a while, affecting online businesses and companies like TNW who alerted users about it in their article . I'm sure when they bought into Amazon's cloud they though that they would be safe. The down-time will also have had an impact on sales on the hosted websites.
Europe has tight data protection laws: A Guardian article states "Data protection law requires businesses to protect personal data from unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction and damage. In addition, personal data must not be transferred outside the European Economic Area unless it goes to a country that has adequate protection for the rights and freedoms of individuals in relation to the way it is processed and stored.". If your data is kept in a cloud you might not know where the servers are, and how to do you ensure that no-one else can access the data, or that the data is safe from corruption?
If there are problems, then you could suddenly find that your brand has been threatened as Sony are finding out when it was discovered that play station user data was stolen (Guardian). The information stolen includes credit card details and customers are worried - are they going to trust Sony with their information in the future? It's not in the interest of big companies to damage their own brands through lax security but as Sony have found out it can happen.
For rural businesses IT security is an issue - and a cost - but cannot be ignored in the global economy. Services like cloud computing are helpful, but don't remove the security problems.
Despite the security issues I believe cloud computing can be quite beneficial for rural areas, especially when applied on a small scale. E.g. right now I'm part of a google group that connects organic producers and small-scale farmers with customers like me for direct marketing. We use simple google spreadsheets to make our orders for different products. A spreadsheet accessed by all people in the group saves a lot of time and organizational efforts, and also money for phone calls, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn the foundation I work for, we also use cloud computing for putting together projects for funding, which can be accessed and worked on collectively by people from different rural locations in the country.
I agree with you Nelly, I'm hoping that my local environment group will move to this for spreadsheets and I can see that it will be useful for all the funding application forms that we need to complete. The benefits outweigh the security issues.
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