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Up in the clouds

Start-up joins the ranks of tech firms touting 'cloud' computing

By Paul Voosen
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 26th, 2008 issue

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Quietly, quietly, the cloud is rolling in from the west.
Several of the United States’ largest technology firms, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, are placing big bets that the future of how both consumers and businesses manipulate all kinds of data — from simple documents to elaborate databases — will increasingly rely on a concept called cloud computing.
At its core, cloud computing seeks to leverage the intensive processing power that comes from the large networks of server farms run by these online giants, typically used for their proprietary operations, like Microsoft’s Hotmail or Google’s search engine. These firms now expect that smaller businesses, instead of spending money to set up their own similar operations, will instead rely on the tech giants’ “clouds” of computer networks to store and process data — outsourcing IT operations, in a way.
“With cloud computing, we are at a point similar to when people started realizing that their money was safer in a bank than under their mattress,” said Annette Ryszkowska, spokeswoman for Google’s enterprise division.
Joining this push for cloud-reliant services is Roman Staněk, one of the Czech Republic’s most successful technology entrepreneurs, with his new venture, Good Data. Staněk is well known in U.S. tech circles for developing NetBeans, a popular computer programming environment that was bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Another start-up, Systinet, was eventually purchased by Hewlett-Packard.
Good Data has remained secretive in advance of the second-quarter release of its demo service, but it has recently launched a Web site detailing its plans to use cloud computing and slick user-design to democratize the use of business intelligence — the raw data used to gauge a company’s success, like number of units sold — among all of a company’s staff, not just the stat heads.
As the start-up gets under way, perhaps the largest challenge facing Good Data, and all the other firms investing in cloud computing, is establishing the trust of businesses and consumers, who may be leery of storing confidential data on another company’s servers.
“The privacy of data and the possibility of fraud will remain key obstacles for the future [development of cloud computing],” said Tomáš Koška, head of Microsoft’s Windows client in the Czech Republic.
Koška doubts firms will move all their data online and will instead rely on hybrid systems. “It wouldn’t be wise to propose concepts based solely on online storage or outsourcing,” he said. “The future is in an appropriate combination of online and local server approaches.”
If cloud computing is going to work, “providers have to prove themselves worthy of that trust,” Ryszkowska said. Google’s security efforts begin with its physical protection of its data centers and then move into the virtual realm, to the application environment and procedures for deploying secure code.
“[In] Google Apps, we create a virtual firewall around an organization’s data, giving the administrator the choice of which users and applications are permitted and how data is shared,” Ryszkowska added.
Google Apps is one of the most prominent current cloud applications, a suite of office productivity tools posed as an online challenger to Microsoft Office; Microsoft launched an online version of Office, called Office Live, partly in response. Google has targeted Apps at small businesses, which it expects to be one of the sectors most able to benefit from its cloud capabilities.
“Cloud computing is particularly valuable to small and midsize businesses, where effective and affordable IT tools are critical to helping them become more productive without spending lots of money on in-house resources,” Ryszkowska said.
Winning over small businesses on financial grounds could also help accustom firms to the idea of storing data remotely, of course. Beyond that reluctance, though, perhaps the largest reason that cloud computing hasn’t expanded further is that, largely, such applications don’t yet exist, said Michal Fišer, head of EMC in the Czech Republic.
“We’re only at the beginning,” he said. “If you have a look at the most-known applications, like SAP or Oracle, most of them aren’t ready for this. ... We have the infrastructure to develop these technologies. But without the applications, it’s only a piece of technology.”
Good Data is one of the companies pushing the envelope in cloud applications. Doing so requires software programmers who have to radically relearn how to write code, Microsoft’s Koška said. Coders will have to adapt programs to be run on a fleet of many different processors — the computer’s brain — rather than on single processor, as most software currently runs on regular PCs.
Another looming obstacle for cloud computing is its reliance on permanent access to the Internet, not always a guarantee when people are on the move. Czech broadband penetration and Internet infrastructure still lag behind the United States and Western Europe, Fišer said.
Milan Švácha, CEO of Casablanca INT, a large Internet service provider, disputes this.
“There are a lot of companies digging fiber [optics] and they’re very serious about it,” he said. “Sometimes you see reviews saying broadband penetration is not so high, but that’s not so true anymore.”
Still, companies will have to take steps to deal with what happens when cloud applications are severed from the Internet, Ryszkowska said.
“Take one of our own products, Google Gears, as an example,” she said. “It addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable.”
Limited to simple applications, cloud computing may seem like a distant promise. Yet Internet users are already reliant on the data-processing capabilities that come from the companies’ computing centers, Ryszkowska said.
“We can leverage the sheer processing power of the cloud to do things that traditional productivity applications cannot do,” she said. “[Already] users can instantly search over 25 gigabytes worth of e-mail online, which is nearly impossible to do on a desktop.”

Paul Voosen can be reached at pvoosen@praguepost.com


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