Can you trust the cloud in a crisis?

By Davey Winder

The cloud is not, despite the claims of many who should know better, anything new. As a concept it has been around for what seems like forever, and some of us have been quite happily using what are referred to as 'in the cloud' applications for many, many years now. 

Security is at the very top of the punch bag list, with the oft-repeated claim that you cannot trust the cloud with your data. Like many oft-repeated claims, this one is not actually based in fact.

However, like any technology which finds itself thrust into the business and media limelight, the cloud has become both a nay saying punching bag and bringer of budgetary miracles. 

Security is at the very top of the punch bag list, with the oft-repeated claim that you cannot trust the cloud with your data. Like many oft-repeated claims, this one is not actually based in fact. Data can be as secure in the cloud as anywhere. Indeed, as with most things, the devil as always is in the detail. But, with increasing numbers of folk looking for inexpensive and quick to setup disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity systems, perhaps what we should really be asking is if the cloud can be trusted in a crisis.

Recovery silver linings or continuity storm brewing?

Dave Blakey, CEO of open source software user interface specialist, Snapt is convinced that for any tech business "the path is already clear" when it comes to increasing business resilience against failure at a reasonable price. At the same time, he admits that, like any network, it has downtime and problems. "The ability to deploy at multiple locations across the globe for a tightly controlled and predictable cost means disaster recovery is a more realistic option for businesses from small to large," he says. 

"The option exists to have a DR setup within the cloud as well - with multiple locations on offer from all the main vendors you can co-locate your business assets with ease". But is he right? Is cloud DR really such a clear cut and no-brainer option?

View from the inside

As managing director of Memset, a cloud infrastructure and hosting business, Kate Craig-Wood should know a thing or two about the capabilities of the cloud. Indeed, she tells IT Pro that a key part of the business proposition has been investing in "massive resilience at all levels" from power and cooling in the datacentre to having hot standby servers in the racks so that its customers don't have to. 

The idea being that if part of a customer's infrastructure fails then the hosting company can fix it quickly. "For our customers that have wholly embraced the cloud, their IT services are extremely resilient," Craig-Wood says. "This even applies to office infrastructure. Say staff can't get in to work because of snow, if their systems are all cloud-based their staff can work from home and the impact is minimal." 

Chris Cowdry, a solution architect at fellow cloud hosting company, Pulsant, agrees that cloud DR is an increasingly popular choice for those organisations that have already embarked upon virtualisation. However, he also points out that most enterprises still have a mix of physical and virtual systems. As such, they need to account for both in any disaster recovery plan and the choices available to them in terms of physical like-for-like replication or using the cloud can be far from straightforward. 

"For those with a mix of physical and virtual infrastructure, using the cloud for disaster recovery is not a case of simply replicating data; it largely depends on the size and scope of the production workloads to be protected, and selecting the disaster recovery solution that is the most suitable for its replication," Cowdry explains.