Throughout the development of cloud computing status quo and the future

Scattered cloud computing

One of the most striking achievements of the twentieth century was the rapid proliferation of computing power (and this remarkable achievement lasted until the twenty-first century), which almost enabled anyone who wanted to have computing power to become " professional". Almost everyone can now perform image and video processing, publish works, and perform complex math calculations.

In today's society where more and more mobile devices are used, consumers and businesses need convenient IT services everywhere. They need cost-effective and scalable IT services. But after all, mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones do not have the same computing power as desktop desktop PCs, so why not allow some networks to handle all the heavy computational tasks and simply send results? The so-called cloud computing can Store your data so you do not need a local storage device and it can handle a large amount of work load so your own device can sustain longer battery life and it will also get you more money at a cheaper rent Calculate ability. This is why we do not like it?

When we started relying more on cloud computing than on local devices, or at least relying on highly distributed computing, we could create fewer service points. In a perfect world, this may not be a problem, but in the present world it exposes each of us to a certain degree of disaster threat.

Fewer attack points

Centralized computing resources mean fewer hacker attacks, or just fewer points of failure in less than perfect networked systems. Citing the technical commentary by Brian Ford at Yale University, "Complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways ... In the worst-case scenario, cloud computing can collapse dramatically, threatening any Depends on the business of its business. "

In addition to some random risk of failure, highly centralized services increase the value of objects in fewer critical point networks, which encourages hacking and malware attacks. Indeed, some of the largest service providers may be able to implement more sophisticated security measures, but believe me that no one is absolutely 100% secure, including the U.S. government, which spends up to trillions of dollars a year on security budgets. When betting is higher, the amount of malicious attack effort will increase accordingly.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest benefits of cloud computing may well be the most terrifying aspect of cloud computing: economies of scale allow users to cut costs. However, economies of scale provide more services to users and involve more and more big users, which in turn requires a larger infrastructure investment. In other words, an enterprise that can become a service provider in this area is increasingly confined to several large enterprises (for example, Amazon). In the absence of other factors, such as long-term concentration shortcomings, there will be a growing tendency to consolidate services into a few large service providers rather than the more fragmented model that has just been moved to the cloud.

Cloud computing encourages regulation

Another danger of cloud computing concentration is its regulation, whether from national government agencies or international regulatory agencies. For example, ZDNet mentioned that the International Telecommunication Union, a unit of the United Nations, is working to establish broader Internet surveillance and that some more hands-on approaches can be done by simply adjusting several major service providers rather than targeting more Small internet service unit (individual or company). These threats are not limited to mere institutions like the United Nations. Federal and state governments are also a regulatory threat.

The article recently published by the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the United States, succinctly states that "cloud computing represents a concentration of information and computing resources that can be easily controlled by the business and the government." In addition, "by its very nature, concentrating resources is very Easy to control, as long as the business has these resources or is within the jurisdiction of the government. "In other words, the move to focus resources on cloud computing is precisely the opposite of the trend at the beginning of this century: The trend has brought people the computing power, while increasing the degree of freedom.

TechnoLlama summarizes the situation as follows: "Removal of WikiLeaks content from Amazon's cloud services, forced shutdowns of Megaupload by the U.S. FBI, continued dependence on a few cloud service providers made Internet control a very simple task While many Internet advocates are focused on working with SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, the Network Information Sharing and Protection Act, (CISPA) fight, but the open and distributed Web is dead in the cloud computing protocol that second.

This particular threat from government regulation and service provider control is even more frightening than the inability to guarantee service reliability and malicious attacks by hackers. Cloud stackups can sound scary, but at least they are superficial and we can recover. Hackers and malware attacks are a long-term issue and are just a matter of humanity. However, the regulation and control of government departments is a constant, suffocating pressure, which violates the ideals of the Internet. (The exact relationship between the internet and cloud computing is a bit vague; they are not the same, but not necessarily separable).

Can we counterattack it?

The current trend is conducive to cloud computing. The most direct benefit of renting computing power is the elimination of the cost of local computing. And the immediate benefits outweigh the longer-term sustainability of the cloud model, especially when sustainability concerns government regulation that interferes with the freedom of information and privacy. Is there any way to return to a less centralized mode while also providing users with a powerful computing power that will not put so much control in the hands of a few people?

This question is difficult to answer. Part of the reason is that a solution requires long-term thinking and a test of practice: it's not just about your business or helping you save money. On the other hand, we can not expect every business to be able to build and maintain its own data center. In addition, it is equally unreasonable to expect all consumers (and enterprises) to store their data locally rather than on cloud services to avoid hacking or subjecting government departments to data scams. But a decentralized strategy model may be feasible. That way we can access the internet and all of our data from our tablets or smartphones anywhere, anytime.