Breaking Digital Gridlock, + Website

CHAPTER 3The Cloud

Run! The cloud has become self aware!

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably have heard someone somewhere mention the cloud. Usually in the context of “that freaking cloud,” in reference to trying continuously to delete a file only to have it mysteriously reappear, or, “The cloud is the greatest thing ever,” uttered by a data center engineer who can now set up an entire system in minutes instead of weeks or months. Whatever the context was, I am sure that you recognized this was an upcoming technology and took note of it or asked a few questions to gain knowledge about it. From there, you likely made some snap decisions about the cloud based on your years of experience with services that have been run outside the four walls of your organization.

The cloud concept isn't exactly new, and in the financial business it's been around for a while. I know many organizations that outsource their ATMs or credit-card processing to what could be considered a cloud in today's terms. I have also seen many organizations move these services in house because of service issues, or a perceived lack of control of the service. I believe that by and large, these experiences have shaped the financial industries' overall fear of cloud-based services. Unfortunately, things can change, and sometimes we need to reexamine things before depending on our past experience to ...