Dana Gardner, Casablanca, and Dropbox

Microsoft details workings of cloud strategy

Microsoft kicked off its annual TechEd conference Monday much the way it did last year's, heavily touting cloud computing as a more efficient way for businesses to run IT operations. This year, however, company executives provided more details about how organizations can actually use cloud computing day-to-day.

The next release of Microsoft System Center will be key to a unified cloud strategy, which will allow line-of-business owners and administrators to control both their public and private cloud workloads from a single view, he said.

Microsoft System Center 2012, due to be released by the end of the year, will feature a single console that will allow virtualized workloads to be managed, whether they reside in-house or on the public cloud.

Dropbox caught with its finger in the cloud cookie jar

Online file storage and sharing site Dropbox admits that it can see the data you've stored. Oops...

“We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation or compulsory legal request; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of Dropbox or its users; or (d) to protect Dropbox's property rights.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Dropbox now asserts that it can decrypt and pass your data on to a third party if Dropfox feels it needs to do so, in order to protect its property rights.
As a result, Soghoian has filed a 16-page complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which asks the FTC to have Dropbox admit that it can get at Dropbox data, making your data vulnerable to an attack on Dropbox's servers; require Dropbox to email its 25 million customers to warn them of the potential problem and suggest that customers encrypt their data independently; force Dropbox to refund money to people who paid for "Pro" service, if they felt they were deceived; and enjoin Dropbox from making future deceptive statements.

Is it time to abandon cloud computing?

Many have suggested we abandon a cloud only strategy.

Should we abandon the cloud for healthcare? Absolutely not.

Should we reset our expectations that highly reliable, secure computing can be provided at very low cost by “top men” in the cloud? Absolutely yes.

I am a cloud provider. At my Harvard Medical School Data Center, I provide 4,000 Cores and 2 petabytes of data to thousands of faculty and staff. At BIDMC, I provide 500 virtualized servers and a petabyte of data to 12,000 users. Our BIDPO/BIDMC Community EHR Private Cloud provides electronic health records to 300 providers.

I know what it takes to provide 99.999 percent uptime. Multiple redundant data centers, clustered servers, arrays of tiered storage and extraordinary power engineering.

With all of this amazing infrastructure comes complexity. With complexity comes unanticipated consequences, change control challenges and human causes of failure.