What shape is that cloud?
Filed under: business, cloud computing, internet, SaaS, trends
Cloud computing has received a burst of media coverage recently – with Gartner putting it at the top of their ten strategic technologies for next year (for the second year running).
I agree with Gartner and think next year we’ll see a real swell in take up and buzz, particularly in software as a service – easily the most visible arm of cloud computing to those outside the IT industry.
For those new to software as a service or “SaaS” it is a model of software licensing and usage where you pay to use software made available over the internet that is built, maintained, kept operational and further developed by a third party. You typically interact with the software via a web browser or occasionally a piece of client software running on your computer.
Given the freedom it gives users from unnecessary licenses, upfront fees, IT maintenance, version control and (some) hardware needs, I think the day will eventually come when the SaaSy small business owner will be able to out compete and out evolve their larger competitors who stick with the installed software model.
These forward looking businesses will reap the benefits of access to their data wherever they are and on multiple devices – PC, laptop and smartphones and instant access to the latest features to improve their business productivity, wow their customers and collaborate with their community of prospects, customers, suppliers and competitors.
Indeed one day in the not too distant future installing software from a CD or paying a large once off licence fee to use a particular software version will become as much as a novelty as using a floppy disc or dialling a rotary dial phone.
Do you think we are approaching a cloud, or at least SaaS, tipping point in Australia? Are you already using a SaaS service – perhaps one you don’t even realise (hint: what personal email system do you use)?
Asking a 3rd party to hold and maintain your data can be fraught with issues. ie. look at what happened with the Hiptop device in the USA last month where Danger/Microsoft made a mess of many users data that they were storing on their “cloud” for T-Mobile users.
Many customers have lost their data and may have to wait quite a while to get it back.
What happens to your secure data if a company that stores it for you is taken over by another company that then may decide to change direction, or goes belly up ??
It will be interesting to see how we arrest this concern of “fly by night” SaaS operators. Agreed there needs to be a lot of trust put in the “cloud” and the companies that procure the services to maintain it 24/7.
Really looking forward to seeing this take off. I use S3 myself extensively for my music collection and video streaming to my devices. Very convenient when its up…
Cloud Computing requires a high capacity, fast, affordable & reliable internet service (NBN perhaps?) not the overpriced & limited/restricted Telstra service presently imposed on most of this country…dream on.
I definitely use and love SaaS tools. As businesses expand and the globe shrinks the need for smart solutions that you can access wherever and whenever you are become much greater. You just have to be mindful and careful about security and privacy. I travel now with a net book + the usual tools eg wifi that allow me to connect to information I want without necessarily having to pay to access the network eg coffee store. But look at where the iphone is in this space and what it can do. It will be interesting to see how people can make money in this new environment though, because as you suggest, there won’t necessarily be license fees or CD’s to purchase.
I have to agree with grump, … there’s many instances where I would if I could use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software storage, but I’m not a millionaire .
@Rocco
I agree that it is important to understand the arrangements in place to backup and access your data. There will be some heartbreak stories as some service provider doesn’t do the right thing or takes time to recover the data. So to an extent caveat emptor as in any area of commerce. It is hard to see Microsoft, Google or any of the other big names in cloud computing being able to get away with that kind of response if they are to remain credible in this space. They’ve all put big investments (billions of dollars) into cloud computing so I can see they’d be keen to get a return on that investment in the short term. Incidentally, Google’s business model and competitive advantage relies entirely upon the success of cloud computing.
I could tell you the story of my backup drive from a reputable company purchased from a reputable computer goods and office supplies store that failed in the warranty period and the manufacturer could not recover my data at all so I was offered a store credit instead. It simply wasn’t worth their time/money to recover the data for me. End result is no data. So the same kind of problems occur today. At least with the economies of scale of SaaS and the high visibility of any outage this should provide a strong incentive for them to do the right thing for all their users.
@Grump
All the SaaS providers out there would be very disappointed if you or anyone else was holding off trying their services because you perceive there might be a speed issue. They certainly don’t think so or they wouldn’t have bet their success on it.
Even with ADSL speeds SaaS can be a very satisfactory experience especially paired with AJAX type technologies that push some of the computing tasks out to the client. Have you ever used a SaaS service on a smartphone? Most likely this is even slower than your ADSL broadband speeds but the experience is still good. Just ask all those happy iPhone users out there!
@Anthony
Have you ever tried using a broadband service that doesn’t charge for uploaded traffic eg to an external cloud computing backup service? This can make the proposition much more economical than alternatives as the traffic doesn’t count towards your download limit. Telstra offers such a plan if you are a business. See the Whirlpool discussion thread for more detail – http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1162280.html
FTPing is one way of sending information offsite but for a backup you really want an automated process that doesn’t rely on you having to intervene.
Ben Armstrong says:
@Anthony
” … Have you ever tried using a broadband service that doesn’t charge for uploaded traffic eg to an external cloud computing backup service? ”
No of course not, … the plan I need is Residential.
I’m a very Unemployable:- Student, Teacher, Volunteer, Highly Trained Electronic/Computer Engineer, Malware Cleaner/Fighter Disabled pensioner, … and all round good guy looking to tell the world Australia is on it’s way, we’re experiencing some Technical problems however. I have noted, with a hearty sigh, my 24 month Bigpond lock in to “A Plan” has expired giving me scope to do some meaningful homework at Whirpool.
Ben Armstrong says:
” …Telstra offers such a plan if you are a business.” No, as much as I’d love to be, as stated above, I’m not in Business Ben.
The Whirpool site has a fantastic service whereby you can lookup a plan that suits your needs, I’ve been aware of this search function at Whirpool, but being on a 24 Month plan made such a search pointless, until now. I’m very impressed with the 69 results.
Not one of them is a Telstra plan, however.
For $60, plus some extraneous small fees, I could have a wonderful plan. You see there are people like myself who may be in someway Disabled, but highly qualified, but very Un-employable . Thus volunteer work, involvement in open source development projects, plus teaching, freely, etc. fills my days.
*Example of just the first Plan of 69 ( Nothing special, but a heck of a lot better than the best Telstra can offer me at present, the 12GB’s 256/56 Ultimate)
:-
20GB Unlimited Offpeak $39.96 /mo 24576/820 20 GB
(+No limit) Shaped (Excess rates marked as “shaped” mean the ISP does not charge for usage beyond the monthly prepaid limit, but once you exceed your limit, your connection may be slowed down.)
(N/A) Free $0
(OptusNet Cable and BigPond Cable are available where i live.)
I would not use 20 GB’s/Month so on the face of it there is hope for high speed Up and Down Broadband, and utilisation of evolving Internet Technology’s. One day in the World of 21st Century Technology is a long time, I’m sure you’ll all agree !
Ben Armstrong says:
” …FTPing is one way of sending information offsite but for a backup you really want an automated process that doesn’t rely on you having to intervene.”
Thus my reliance on a 500 GB USB External Hard Drive. Access to cloud computing technology “could” put me in a position to break away from an Unemployable, skilled but disabled, situation. Demographically good Internet plans are paramount to us people.
So what I’ve tried to do here is to state my demographic, my needs, and availability of plans at a reasonable residential plan . I’m surprised actually that there are some good ones, whether Telstra plans to squash such plans by not playing with other ISP’s on a level playing field, and whether the Rudd Government intends stripping Telstra’s infrastructure right out from underneath it are a couple of dynamics which will come to a head some day soon.
By the way Ben, the link to Whirpool you provided (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1162280.html) contains on that page a telstra business deadlink, 404 .
These tend to frustrate customers may I add.
*Quote: User #182925 2102 posts
Hstroyer
Section Moderator
I believe you might have it the wrong way around.
Once you upload more than 4 times what you download, the excess kicks in. For example,
If you download 500gb a month, as long as you dont upload more than 2000gb, your safe.
To Quote the TID Website:
If your total uploads exceed your total downloads by a ratio of 4:1 in any given month, we may charge you a back channel charge of 4c for each additional megabyte of data you upload in that month in excess of the 4:1 ratio.
Otherwise, it’s a truly unlimited plan I believe, though as always, best bet is to confirm that by calling the Telstra Business team on 1800 655 744
http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/productsservices/helpmechoosedetail.19499?contentId=prod:152&idProductContainer=19196
404, page not found.
Hi Anthony
You probably haven’t seen the recent broadband pricing change announcement for consumers – http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/media/announcements_article.cfm?ObjectID=46084. Hopefully there is something there that meets your requirements. Full details should come out tomorrow.
On the business pricing thanks for telling me about the link issue. I can’t vouch for the contents of the 404ed page but I assume it was something like this: http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/productsservices/telstrabusinessbroadbandadsl.10837 which says amongst other things:
“+ Unless you have chosen a plan with an unlimited traffic allowance, if your total uploads exceed your total downloads by a ratio of 4:1 in any given month, we may charge you 4.4c for each additional MB of data you upload in that month in excess of the 4:1 ratio.”
So even on a 5GB data plan if you downloaded 5GB you would be able to upload 20GB.
Ben Armstrong thankyou for your reply .
I’m on an affordable practical plan, Bigpond ADSL 256/64kbps Liberty, with a reasonable 12 GB’s usage. One of your best for Home Users I believe, maybe things have changed but my research tends towards this Telstra plan.
The thought of uploading a 10 MB’s of data @ 64kbps gives me a feeling of defeat and well this will take all day, let alone 48 GB’s which at 64kbps is impossible, the chance of data corruption and length of time to complete.
I’ll look into :
“You probably haven’t seen the recent broadband pricing change announcement for consumers – http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/media/announcements_article.cfm?ObjectID=46084. Hopefully there is something there that meets your requirements. Full details should come out tomorrow.”
I shall look into the info, thanks.
What I see is a conception that Business will pay for plans with small usage allowances, as there really is no choice.
Home users will try to be more thrifty . The balance between excess usage, and Uploading/Downloading Speeds is the essence.
The usage for a General user browsing the Web would I’m sure be close to 10 GB’s / Month as an average. There are other considerations as per Security program Updating, General program Updates. And we haven’t even started talking FTP storage, or Cloud Computing.
Looking at http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/productsservices/telstrabusinessbroadbandadsl.10837
I see one plan I’d call vaguely reasonable for Home users, 20GB for $90.00 @ 512/512 Kbps~ per Month.
Looking further the above plan has Excess Usage (excluding unlimted plans) @ $0.08/MB; Account Set Up Fee: 24 month term $0 . This is quite attractive ! I’ll keep an eye on these links for further reasonable plans, thanks.
I’m sorry if I’ve waived of the beaten path of the Thread Topic: “What shape is that cloud?”, but I do feel with restrictive usage caps, and then further charges, Telstra aint gonna sell product, and Home …, and yes maybe business can absorb such fees, …but I’m a Home user looking to be on a reaonable par with users worlwide, as I work on Open Source programs, offer Help and Advice on many Topics wich, with a upload limit of 64kbps is very limiting to my colleages, and myself.
Let us all be reminded a lot of folk do offer great amounts of unpaid work online so people are safe, and informed as to choices of Open Source programs which will evolve and are competitive against professional propriety software.
Do you envisage Ben a time when the excess usage fees, and slow upload speeds will be, say 20 GB’s upward limited, @ 1 or greater than 1 mbps ?
Thankyou for your time and advice Ben,
Kind Regards,
Anthony.
The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
It’s something that is quite new and the concept is starting to be taken up by a number of file sharing and collaboration companies on the net.