Cloud computing: The bad and the ugly

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 09/01/2010 - 09:47

What do the following things have in common?

• Minicomputers
• Relational databases
• Client-server computing
• Object-oriented programming
• Web 2.0

All of the above were the latest and greatest IT buzzphrases that, over the past thirty years, were supposed to solve all the world's IT problems. Cloud computing, which by squinting only slightly, could be replaced with the word "mainframe," is the latest buzzphrase.

A good buzzphrase is meaningless, so that it can be used in a variety of conflicting and confusing ways, meaning different things to different vendors and organizations. And cloud computing is no exception. Two incidents this week highlight the fact that cloud computing is just as vulnerable to problems as every past IT buzzphrase.

In Virginia, the Department of Motor Vehicles has been unable to issue drivers licenses for almost a week because the systems that manage that have been down. Some years ago, the state outsourced DMV computer operations to a third party, which has been having some problems getting the computers back up. This situation is basically a "cloud" computing model, where a third party in a remote location provides a service to the DMV--the processing of drivers licenses. In this case, the DMV has outsourced a core function, which puts the organization at risk if there is a major failure, as accountability for the failure is diluted via a business contract--as opposed to calling the head of IT in for a dressing down.

A second incident was personal. I got a call from a well-known nationally recognized bank, which happens to hold our mortgage. They claimed that we had missed a payment, but oddly, could not tell us immediately what month we had missed. It took over an hour on the phone speaking to a total of six different people before we figured out the problem. What does that have to do with cloud computing?

We pay our mortgage using the bank's online payment system, which is basically a cloud computing application. What I found out is that it is riddled with design flaws and bugs. We had confirmation numbers for every payment in the past several months, but several of the people we talked to had no way of looking up those confirmation numbers--confirmation numbers generated by their own cloud computing application. Furthermore, they stubbornly insisted that in fact, we had never even logged in to make a payment recently, even though we had confirmation numbers! What this told me was that their system stinks; it lacks adequate logging of transactions, loses transactions, and that the bank's internal interface used by their staff is grossly inadequate to provide even minimal customer service. The idea that a major bank could provide a customer with a confirmation number for a large financial transaction and then later have NO RECORD of that transaction is appalling.

Is cloud computing bad? No. It's a tool, just like any other IT tool. But slapping the term "cloud computing" on a computer system does not make it invulnerable to problems, and does not mitigate problems caused by careless design, inadequate planning, and poor data management.