Is Google Losing Document?

Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Officially Launched

By G C Network | February 14, 2011

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra officially launched the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy today. While this is clearly not new news, the document does state the government’s position in a very succint manner.…

GEOINT’s Future is in the Cloud

By G C Network | January 31, 2011

Recently, Geospatial Intelligence Forum Magazine asked me for my thoughts on the role of cloud computing in the future of geospatial intelligence.My response was recently published in their December 2010…

eTechSuccess: Patterns of Success – Kevin Jackson

By G C Network | January 27, 2011

 My sincere appreciation to John Baker for the eTechSuccess: Patterns of Success interview. John and I worked together IBM as part of the Wireless Emerging Business Organization. His team and…

USBE&IT Winter Issue Focuses on Cyber Security

By G C Network | January 19, 2011

Thank You USBE&IT Publisher Mr Tyrone Taborn for such an inspiring issue and my sincere appreciation to Mr. Frank McCoy for my inclusion in his list of Cyber visionaries! The Homeland…

Global GovCloud with Cisco and VCE

By G C Network | January 18, 2011

Last week I had the awesome experience of participating in a global telepresence conference on government cloud computing. Joining me as presenters were Blake Salle, Senior Vice President of VCE,…

NIST Cloud Computing Collaboration Twiki Launches

By G C Network | December 30, 2010

Today I received my credentials for the NIST Cloud Computing Collaboration Site. “The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been designated by Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra…

GovCloud Predicitons for 2011

By G C Network | December 30, 2010

Happy New Year All!! 2011 will be the breakout year for GovCloud! Pressure to reduce budget, pressure to manage I resources better and the political pressure of the next presidential…

Vivek Kundra Unveils 25-Point IT Management Reform Program

By G C Network | December 10, 2010

Yesterday the US Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, unveiled an ambitious 25-point implementation plan for delivering more value to the American taxpayer. This plan focuses on execution and is designedto establish…

GSA and Unisys/Google Marks GovCloud Watershed

By G C Network | December 4, 2010

As widely reported this week, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded a contract to Unisys to create a secure cloud-based email and collaboration platform. The solution will…

NIST Moves Forward on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 8, 2010

Last week the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) held their second Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop. Skillfully shepherded by Ms. Dawn Leaf, the agency’s senior executive of cloud computing,…

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.
    ————————————————————————————————————
    Nike Free Run