Is Google Losing Document?

US Army Cloud Computing Class at Ft. Gordon, GA

By G C Network | June 24, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleassue of teaching yet another US Army cloud computing class.  This time the venue was Ft. Gordon, GA and the students definitely…

78 Agency Services Identified for Cloud Transition

By G C Network | May 29, 2011

The Office of Management and Budget recently released a list of 78 projects slated for transition to cloud over the next year. The most common application, according to a FierceGovernmentIT,…

NGA Sets GEOINT Strategic Direction with Earth Builder

By G C Network | May 15, 2011

Last month Google and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency started sharing details about their “GEOINT on Demand” collaboration. The project, named Earth Builder, was built specifically to enable NGA to…

Teleology Systems Introduces CloudeFX at DoDIIS

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Next week at DoDIIS, NJVC will be showcasing a few of our government cloud computing partners. One of the most exciting of these is the Cloud Service Orchestration Framework by…

Cloud Computing Highlighted at DoDIIS 2011

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Are you going to DoDIIS? Schedule for May 1-5, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan, the conference highlights the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) commitment to developing and maintaining secure and reliable networks for…

Washington DC a Cloud Computing Trendsetter!

By G C Network | April 16, 2011

A TechJournal South article last week named Washington, DC as a leading trendsetter in cloud computing. Citing a Microsoft sponsored survey, conducted by 7th Sense research, D.C. was highlighted as particullarly receptive…

Melvin Greer Cited by IBM for Cloud Computing Innovation

By G C Network | April 5, 2011

Congratulations to my good friend Melvin Greer for being awarded IBM’s first ever ACE Award!! “Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow has won IBM’s first ever Awarding Customer Excellence (ACE)…

“GovCloud: The Book” Launched at National Press Club Event

By G C Network | March 30, 2011

As many of you know, today marked the official launch of my first book – GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government. Today’s venue was the National Press Club…

“Cloud Musings on Forbes” Launched!!

By G C Network | March 24, 2011

Today I published my first post on Forbes.com!! At the invitation of Bruce Upbin, Forbes.com editor, I will be contributing posts monthly. I see this not only as an honor,…

Tech America and INSA Form Cloud Computing Advisory Groups

By G C Network | March 6, 2011

Last week TechAmerica announced the formation of a “cloud computing commission” to advise the White House on the current plans to steer more than $20B worth of IT services toward…

John Dvorak posted this question on his blog Saturday and as of Sunday evening had 52 responses! This is not a good thing for building confidence in cloud computing. Or is it?

The story is that users of Google Docs were receiving the message “Sorry! We are experiencing technical difficulties and cannot show all of your documents.” Apparently the document were restored by Saturday evening, but this incident just reinforces two points:

  • Just like any other human enterprise, cloud computing isn’t infallible; and
  • The Google cloud was apparently able to restore all the documents

In the thread it seems that Google Docs was down for one day. Not knowing what happened, this recovery seems to have been just as good as any other global enterprise.

So what’s the beef with cloud computing? I don’t see any. I do, however, see a problem with the document recovery delay. The issue is that a cloud service should be designed in a way that makes such failures invisible to the users.

This is why I’m a fan of cryptographic data splitting and with geographic disbursement. With this approach, even with a complete failure in one geographic location, data can be reconstituted and served immediately from the other, multiple storage locations without service lost. This type of service level cannot be provided by current RAID solutions.

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

1 Comments

  1. maplestorymesos on April 5, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    Your idea coincides with mine.and I think it's better.
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