Clouds...the wind of change

Cloud computing, while it may sound fluffy and abstract, has taken a firm hold as the future of business computing. The successes of web sites such as flickr (photo storage), mozy (data storage), and Facebook have shown the viability of online computing and storage. Making people’s data, photos, music, video, etc. available to them wherever they have internet access, including their mobile devices has changed they way people store data in their digital lives. Furthermore, these cloud-based companies have evolved the idea web applications into a pocket-sized, go-everywhere “app”. These apps, which are designed to work on an exponentially growing number of devices, provide the full features of proprietary software and access to client data. Along with the expansion of open source applications cloud computing is allowing nearly any computer based activity to occur though an internet portal, saved, and then accessed anywhere. Yet when rolling these ideas into a business application one must be cognizant of the security issue created my sending out extremely sensitive information to store on the internet. I see the major issue in the implementation of a large-scale cloud computing system as the security that companies have over their data and intellectual property as it is transferred over the internet. While encryption is continuing to develop, the fact there is still a risk may be deterring some companies from jumping into the cloud.