Be a cloud storage tycoon with Google Nearline

garage-full-of-possessions2-1Update — Reader Justin Fischer points out my math below is off. Interestingly I wasn’t the only reporter to make this mistake. Sorry.

If you have an entrepreneurial bent it’s hard not to see an opportunity to start the next big cloud storage company in last week’s Nearline Storage announcement by Google. I saw it immediately. So did Google make a big pricing mistake? Probably not.

Nearline storage usually means files stored on tapes in automated libraries. You ask for the file and a robot arm loads the tape giving you access to your data in a couple minutes. Google’s version of nearline storage is way faster, promising file […]

By |March 16th, 2015|2015, cloud computing, Startups, strategy|17 Comments
Read More

Cloudy with a chance of data loss

 

This is a followup to my recent column about Steve Wozniak’s warning on the perils of cloud computing, especially cloud storage. It might surprise many users to know there are firms that sell cloud storage and do not back it up.  They rely on the disk RAID and some redundancy in the cloud to “protect” your data.  If something happens to their data center, they could probably not recover your data.

Remember MailandNews.com? They did not have a viable business model.  They also didn’t back up their servers.  One day they had a big crash and relied on the RAID array to recover the data.  It took two weeks and still not all of the data was recovered.

RAID is not a data backup technology.

What […]

By |August 11th, 2012|2012, Computing, Internet|46 Comments
Read More

A belt and suspenders for your cloud storage

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak this week warned of the perils of depending too much on cloud storage and the general press reacted like this was: A) news, and; B) evidence of some inherent failure in cloud architecture. In fact it is not news (Woz never claimed it was) and mainly represents something we used to call “common sense.”

However secure you think your cloud storage is, why solely rely on it when keeping an extra backup can cost from very little to nothing at all?

No matter whose cloud you are depending on it will be subject to attack. Bigger targets get more attacks and something as big as DropBox, say, is a mighty big target, while that spare hard drive attached to a […]

By |August 8th, 2012|2012, Computing, How To's, Internet, Privacy and Security, Technology|36 Comments
Read More

Cloudy judgement at BAE Systems

Microsoft last week lost a potential European customer for its cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 product over concerns about the Patriot Act allowing U.S. government access to to private data. UK defense contractor BAE Systems said they’d changed plans on advice of their lawyers. Smart lawyers.

If we have to rely on lawyers for data security advice, we’re in real trouble.

Frankly I think the US Government and the Patriot Act would be the least of their problems.  If a defense contractor put their data on a public cloud service it would be an open invitation to Iran, North Korea, China, and others to try to steal it.

It boggles my mind that BAE even thought about putting […]

By |December 9th, 2011|2011|63 Comments
Read More