The cloud is not the answer to every question

Recently, in my normal job as a journalist, I've been finding that every new story pitch, interview request, product inquiry or - well, pretty much every e-mail I've sent has led to the response that: the cloud can solve that problem. Need better security on your laptop? Use the cloud. Need better scalability in your data center? Use the cloud. Have an itch that just won't subsist? Use the cloud.

The problem is that the cloud doesn't actually solve every problem today. It may actually only solve a small percentage of problems. If I am doing my accounting on my laptop using Microsoft Excel because that's what my boss told me to use, then the cloud doesn't help. If I am a data center manager and my company just installed a new storage array that has to meet the needs of a growing marketing department, then the cloud is not going to help me. It may help eventually, I know.

As with any new trend, the people selling cloud services want the cloud to be the answer to every question, but it's not. This is a good lesson for Web 2.0 companies and those who use Web 2.0 sites. I was reminded of this the other day when I started using an online task manager. Okay, it's great when the Web services are running and there are no Net glitches, but in a two day period, the site was down once and my fixed wireless connection to my office got munged up once. I didn't know what to do, because I couldn't access my task manager online, and I rarely remember to sync anything.

These issues will be relieved when Web apps are as reliable as my coffeemaker, and the Net runs so fast that we don't care how fast it is anymore. And, when the code used for Web 2.0 sites is impenetrable to attacks, as stable as desktop software, and works seamlessly and automatically in an offline mode.

The cloud, for now, is just another way of doing computing. It's far from perfect, requires new funding (and loss of current investment), and doesn't even work for some activities.