Business hesitant to leap into the Cloud

... of ever getting an impartial assessment of Cloud?

While I can understand your impatience Trevor, I'd like to answer in two ways.

First, if there is an implication in your comment that Chris has a vested interest here, I'd suggest you join our cloud computing for accountants discussion group. He's been involved with it for several months now as "group manager" and having adopted a stance of cautious optimism about the technology, he's been on the receiving end of several diatribes from Cloud evangelists with more tunnel vision. While he may have joined the Cloud Industry Forum he's not a mindless advocate for the technology for it's own sake - he's putting in a real effort to understand it from an accountant's perspective and to highlight the pros and the cons, as his report on the summit suggests.

On the wider issue of impartial guidance, we have long harboured the ambition to document the emerging Cloud accounting applications. It seems one or two new ones pop out every week and due to a lack of resource at AccountingWEB.co.uk we haven't been able to keep up. This will be one of my ambitions for 2011 and I hope that we can help provide the information and impartial analysis you seek.

You can help too by adding your thoughts and observations to the deliberations in our Cloud group.

• It is another biased Cloud article, attempting to portray non-cloud users as uninformed or fuddled thinkers.
• Cloud is of use to some people, not all.
• Over 20 years ago I worked at a firm which installed a complete hardware and software solution, cheap in the first few years though strangely expensive once seriously committed to the software and hardware. Support became a nightmare, faults were not always resolved, customer service became worse and obviously control was minimal. Other IT "solutions" were the same. Of course we could repeat the same mistakes, and added to the bargain be dependent upon internet access which can’t be relied upon. No thanks.    

@Trevor Scott - good to know that an open mind still prevails

As I undertand matters Chris Challis is a 'user' who originally lean't towards scepticism about Cloud systems; because of this he was initially chosen as representative of a questionning public

One has to ask what is the point in providing you with '.. an impartial assessment of Cloud ..' because on the face of it, your mind is already made up. In any event, very often impartiality is in the mind of the beholder and whichever way one plays it there are bound to be accusations of impartiality from one side or the other

The bottom line is if you don't wish to adopt this technology then that is just fine - don't use it. But to cite something 20 years ago as a reason for not considering a solution today is a questionable stance. Surely any technology must be judged on its merits today and not on historical heresay

Quite frankly the internet access reliability argument is equally spurious to day and will become more so in the future - yes there are outages but from experience it is not an everyday occurance as implied - in fact the last time my internet went down was months ago
 

Just looking at the abstract concepts rather than the rights and wrongs of the parties, it looks to me that as well as placing its data on Cloud servers to distribute the riskand avoid attacks/takedowns, Wikileaks should also have distributed its finances in an analogous manner, to avoid being overly reliant on any one (or dozen !) payment provider or system.

Are there any signs of this concept coming into being in reality ? How might it be implemented ? Does anyone (else) care ?!

Seems as if it would have uses:

1. in authoritarian regimes
2. for civil liberties organisations but ...
3. for criminals of varying degree :-(

Dear JC

• Please don’t misrepresent my views.
• I am so sick of biased marketing that I asked for an impartial assessment of Cloud, thereby establishing that I would actually like an impartial assessment of Cloud.
• I am aware that Mr Challis has a financial interest in marketing Cloud and this is reflected in the above article. “why are companies taking so long to adopt it” should perhaps be changed to “why should they give up management control and enslave themselves to a provider who is strangely quiet when a software upgrade goes wrong or they can’t correct a fault, yet is all too loud if you threaten to withhold a payment until you have a working service”.  
• You may live in an area with excellent internet access but I don’t share your luxury and I don’t live in the sticks…many are in a far worse position than moi. My internet access isn’t the fastest, crawls at times and breaks off a few times per day but isn’t forecasted to improve unless the Uk government can find the billions they fantasise that they can get.
• I do operate Cloud to a limited extent, so I know the SWOT’s. Many people already operate on some kind of Cloud basis but don’t realise it.
• Cloud was around before the term “Cloud”, it is of use to some but certainly not to all.
• During the 1980’s there was a similar craze to Cloud, missing out the jargon it consisted of dumb terminals connected to a server hosting a selection of software. Marketed as a low cost, one step solution to all your needs, a complete trouble free service where the worry of IT is removed at a reduced cost.  The dumb terminals were quickly outdated, couldn’t be upgraded, were expensive to replace; software updates were slow to arrive, never worked properly and there were always compatibility issues, they often caused chaos, cost a fortune in time and money with a knock on effect to customers, all at the same time as suffering higher contract prices which strangely went up as you were ever more entrenched into their system.  At that time many practices promised never again.   
• I gave an outline of my views with indications of how I arrived at them, using the example of a system that operated on a similar basis and with similar issues, ie giving up in part/whole the practical ability to plan, lead, organise and control …. which are the four basic functions of management. Many boards wouldn’t stand for management who didn’t have complete control of systems essential to the very existence of the organisation. So, in an age when IT systems are even more critical to an organisations survival, I would just love someone to explain why it is such a great idea for so many to take the extra step of abandoning the ability to have total management control of their own IT system.
• And as for data security, Wikileaks distributing details of a certain bank’s activities may well severely limit the trust in sending data over the internet.    

@Trevor Scott - many thanks for elaborating on your point of view

'.. biased marketing ..' - did you go to the Business Cloud Summit to see for yourself what was on offer and challenge the providers? @jstokdyk has already indicated that Aweb would like to provide an impartial assessment of Cloud - however, does your concern refer to Cloud in generic terms or applications within that environment? I am sure that if you offered your sevices to AWeb to review Cloud systems they would probably take you up on the offer

I was not aware that Chris Challis had an overt '.. financial interest in marketing Cloud ..'. As for the commment '.. why should they give up management control and enslave themselves ....' this actually strikes of an axe to grind or the fact that a bad experince in the past has an over-riding influence on the present. Most of the Cloud systems currently available have no contract period so the user can walk away at any time - this in turn means that they have to be more responsive because their revenue stream is at stake

Yes the term Cloud is fairly recent - in simple terms it's predecessors were SaaS, ASP etc... - as has already been acknowledged it suits some people/situations but not others - so don't use it if it is unsuitable

'.. During the 1980's ..' - there are all sorts of reasons for dumb-terminals being superceeded which range from the advent of todays client/server in place of traditional main frames (IBM370/ICL2972 etc) and the emergence of windows with GUI instead of text based screens; for the most part these were driven by advances in technology

At the time the whole point of a dumb-terminal was just that - a basic viewing medium to provide a 'window' on a backend main frame. Of course a dumb-terminal couldn't be updated and in the main most of the software updates you illude to were main frame updates which by their very nature were slow to implement (remember only 5 years before 1980 a lot of programming was done on punched cards)

'.. I gave an outline of my views with indications of how I arrived at them ..' - I accept this statement, although it would seem as though most of the objections are based on historical experience

'.. as for data security ..' - the main flaw in any security system is people. As for thinking that your desktop computer is any more secure that the internet then think again. Your desktop is probably connected to the internet and no doubt you run critical applications on the machine. Do you know whether any of those applications is sending all sorts of information contained on your computer back up the line to someone elsewhere (this is the whole concept of certain types of virus)? Whereas with a Cloud system the browser is 'ring fenced' from the rest of your computer and only communicates with the host

One of the beauties of a Cloud based system is delivery through the browser. Yes there are certain technical constraints but the advantages of backend processing, operating system independance, single point system updates, 'ring fencing' from the underlying pc, access anywhere, no downloads etc.. make it a very attractive approach
 

• Since you have posted again and misrepresented my views, with quite an angry tone, this will be my last comment.
• No I didn’t go to the Cloud Summit. I am sure that I had other things to do. but even if I didn’t then I would probably give it a miss because I would likely run into people like Bob-Ad-Nauseam.
• You may find it strange, but I do classify someone who was a partner in a business that marketed/sold Cloud as having a financial interest in such.
• The purpose of using what you describe as “historical experience” is that unlike many characters I do not have experience of that which I haven’t yet taken part in; because nobody can have experience of the future!!!!!
• I used an old example of dumb terminals connected to a server as trap for an unsuspecting expert, if such a person comes along then I will deal with them.
• It takes time to organise a replacement for a “Cloud partnership”, anyone taking it lightly is likely to find themselves in a bigger mess…and I’d have a few queries about their ability to manage… That was why I asked for someone to explain why it is such a great idea for so many to take the extra step of abandoning the ability to have total management control of their own IT system.

@Trevor Scott - apologies for misrepresenting your views in any way, it was not intentional and my responses only referred to specific points raised in your preceding posting

Nevertheless, I have the following questions just to clarify some areas so that any misrepresentation doesn't occur again

'.. I would likely run into people like Bob-Ad-Nauseam ..' what do you mean by this

'.. unlike many characters I do not have experience of that which I haven’t yet taken part in ..' - as I understand this comment, you do not have any experience with current Cloud systems and as a substitute choose to discuss matters that occurred 20 years ago

'.. as trap for an unsuspecting expert ..' - perhaps you can explain why anyone would try to deliberately trap a person in this manner
 

We operate Cloud and it is brilliant.  See my blog http://tinyurl.com/35xtnhw for the full story!