Monday, May 16, 2011

Isn't it ironic

The Apple and Linux operating systems don't get much attention when it comes to virus warnings and outbreaks. That's the upside of having such small market share ... no one dreams of infecting less than 15% of the machines out there. So I guess it's a badge of honor that infection rates among Windows 7 PCs is now estimated at 4 PCs per 1,000. Not surprisingly, Vista PCs are infected at a rate of just under 8 per 1000. That nightmare OS is just not as secure or robust as its younger brother. Also unsurprisingly, XP infection rates fell; XP is no longer a tantalizing target.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Poor Adoption for Cloud Storage

At least for large companies, it seems that cloud-based storage is off the table for now. According to a survey by TheInfoPro, a research firm based in New York City, less than 10% of respondents (247 of the Fortune 1000) are even considering plans to place bottom tier data in the cloud. Generally, respondents cited performance and possession as their primary concerns:
Performance still comes up in the commentary, as well. The problem is when you need the data back...there isn't a high level of confidence that they can do that through an external system.
-- Marco Coulter, TheInfoPro's research director of storage

What this tells me that we should be very wary of recommending cloud-based storage to business leaders. Granted, large companies have significantly more resources at their disposal when it comes to building out internal storage solutions. Therefore they can afford the high-end redundancy and recovery solutions that are beyond the reach of smaller organizations. However, they also have the resources to make cloud-based solutions viable. And they haven't figured it out, yet.

In this case, I believe that discretion is the better course. Amazon's recent failures, along with Google's system problems, demonstrate that these systems still have some reliability issues. And the risks still outweigh the benefits... at least for now.

Credit: ComputerWorld: Fortune 1000 firms shun public cloud storage