Is Google Losing Document?

Virtual Machines in Virtual Networks

By G C Network | August 4, 2008

One of the key value propositions in cloud computing is built around increase efficiencies. These eficiencies are diven by the use of virtual machines (VMware, XEN, etc.) and the automated…

SOA-R Interest Grows

By G C Network | August 1, 2008

Interest continue to grow in the use of cloud computing concepts for national security missions. Although some view the idea of a “private cloud” as an oxymoron, I personally see…

Microsoft: “Cloud Computing is the Plan”

By G C Network | July 31, 2008

From the Wireless Business & Technology Cloud Computing News Desk : “Ballmer highlighted software-plus-service, associating it with a ‘platform in the cloud and delivering applications across PCs, phones, TVs, and…

CC Tidbits

By G C Network | July 31, 2008

Interesting tidbits from Maureen O’Gara in Apple, Google, Yahoo & Cloud Computing: Industry gadfly John Dvorak is advancing a theory culled from the blogosphere that Microsoft wants Yahoo for some…

Correlative Analytics: Cloud Computing Google Mindshare

By G C Network | July 30, 2008

Correlative Analytics (A.K.A. “The Google Way of Science“) postulates that extremely large databases of information, starting in the petabyte level, may be sufficient to skip the theory part of the…

What is Cloud Computing? — Another view

By G C Network | July 29, 2008

Irving Wladasky-Berger, chairman emeritus of IBM’s Academy of Technology, recently wrote and article on cloud computing titled “What is Cloud Computing, Anyway?”. The following is my interpretation of a few…

Dark Cloud Computing

By G C Network | July 28, 2008

In his blog article “The Rise of The Dark Cloud” Reuven Cohen wonders about a growing interest in covert computing. Although he briefly mentions malevolent uses of the net, the…

July Military Information Technology magazine

By G C Network | July 25, 2008

This month’s issue of Military Information Technology magazine has the Army’s Chief Information Officer, Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Sorenson, on the cover. The enclosed special report, titled LANDWARNET Transformation, has…

“The Big Switch” and Intellipedia Highlighted

By G C Network | July 24, 2008

During last week’s SOA-R session, Steven Armentrout referenced “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr as a very enlightened view of our changing world. On July 17th, Information Week’s Richard Martin…

Does anybody really know what cloud computing is?

By G C Network | July 23, 2008

Less than 2% of the CIOs in an Infoworld survey said that cloud computing was a priority. The surveyed indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1…

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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