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Hey , Google , get off o’ my cloud .

Posted by Diarmuid Keane on 30-Jul-2009 - Filed under: IT Consulting , also relevant to: Cloud Computing, Data Privacy, Google Apps, Low Cost, SMB - 13 Comments

As they tend to do with everything else Google are maintaining a strong presence in the growing market for providing key business software and infrastructure as a service.
Just this month they have elevated their ready-to-use cloud computing product ‘Google Apps’ from beta status sending out a clear signal that this is no longer seen as ‘experimental’ and confers it status as a product in its own right.

Google Apps is a web accessible platform that provides storage and functionality to a business to run a mail server and office documentation editing capability. It’s really made up of three elements: Gmail with domain personalisation, Google Docs and Google Sites.

The basic product is free for up to 50 users with a total of around 7GB storage space and is geared toward small enterprise that don’t have the space/capital/expertise to set up this on their own. For operations with more employees the economy of scale becomes more visible especially with regard to the saving on expensive end user license agreements. They even tell you how you might estimate this saving.

Recently, to lure more defectors away from Microsoft, they have provided a synchronisation tool to facilitate migration from Microsoft Outlook. If you’re a small business with a registered domain name then Google Apps will provide you with mail server and storage capability in your own domain name.
Google Apps is based on the free to use development framework Google Apps Engine which competes with cloud development platforms such as Amazon AWS , Microsoft Azure and others viz. Ubuntu . These tools allow businesses with development expertise to connect their own cloud based services tailored to the needs of their business such as e-commerce, online payments etc. What sets Google Apps apart is that it seems to be the only cloud based application that is ready-to-use without prior assembly and development.

In this light hearted but insightful treatment the scientist Simon Wardley of Ubuntu/Canonical outlines the circumstances that have brought about ‘The Cloud’ in a way that seems to assert its inevitability .

However, absent from his talk is the subject of data protection and client confidentiality, a big consideration when contemplating migrating to the cloud.
Relinquishing direct physical control over your businesses documentation flow is not a decision to be taken lightly. What assurances do Google give regarding the security of your data?

A read over of the Terms of Services for Google Accounts would suggest that you in fact agree to allow Google to do what they like with this data. See section 11 here.

Obviously some lee-way is necessary for the management of data within a colossal organisation like Google who rely on numerous third parties to sustain and provide the services. However the text seems to give Google carte blanche to allow anyone they deem suitable to see your data without notifying you who or when. It appears that beyond mere data administration their intention is to use the data to drive directed marketing and they do make specific mention of providers of ’syndicated services’ and this has caused alarm

So can your data ‘fall into the wrong hands’? A few more factors would need to conspire for this to happen. For instance the ‘wrong hands’, be they the competition, the revenue commissioner or your ex-partner, would need to know the Google cloud had your data. Then, by what deft feat of social engineering would they penetrate the Google fortress? How would they know where to look?
Though difficult, these are not impossibilities and may well plant a doubt in the mind of otherwise enthusiastic cloud converts.

Also supposing you wish to at some time in the future bring it all back in-house again or go to an alternative cloud. What mass exporting facilities do google provide? In the case of mail it would seem possible to synchronise to and external IMAP mail client but Google Docs there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get at your data back in bulk quickly. This is a shortcoming that Google would need to address if they don’t want clients to compare them to banks in the sense of how easy it is to lodge but not so easy to withdraw. To allay management concerns over relocating data to an unknown offsite location Google should do everything possible to ensure the level of control over that data remains undiminished.

So once again it would appear there’s no free lunch. Gartner exposes a few other problems in its report condensed here.

Cloud providers will have to address these issues to encourage uptake in their service. I had contacted Google to discuss these points and get some more clarity but at the time of writing they had yet to get back to me. This will be the subject of a follow-up article so watch this space!

In the meantime if you can tolerate these shortcomings the fact that you can get going at zero cost and scale up from there makes Google Apps a worthwhile option for modest sized operations in these hard pressed times

Read the follow up to this post >>

Diarmuid Keane © 2009