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While electricity is pretty much fungible, data is not. Imagine there exist two companies who are competitors, A and B. Now company A outsources its data with

by jaydub 17y ago

While electricity is pretty much fungible, data is not. Imagine there exist two companies who are competitors, A and B. Now company A outsources its data with a third party service. When company A managed its own hardware infrastructure it had tight control over physical access to every machine. Now that its data is hosted with a 3rd party, there is a greater possibility that the data becomes physically compromised.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
Data is not fungible, but storage capacity is. Go ask Google if you don't believe me. Also, your A/B argument works about as well against commoditized electric power as it does against commoditized data storage. Why is it a no-brainer for company A to give up its generating infrastructure but not its server infrastructure? Yes, there will be a few exceptions like hospitals, which keep generators on site and have very strict confidentiality rules to observe. But in the main, if a factory can risk a temporary loss of power to all its machines and still come out ahead by dealing with a utility, why can't an office supply company also come out ahead by risking temporary loss of access to its CRM data?
- jaydub 17y ago
  First of all, the electrical grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid) is by this point a pretty well hardened and redundant infrastructure in major metropolitan areas. I do think that for startps and smaller companies, receiving and paying for storage/compute power like electricity is the way to go. But back for a moment to the A/B example. My point here is really with companies that are dealing with sensitive information. Let A = JP Morgan & B = Morgan Stanley. JP Morgan, I would guess (somewhat wildly) probably owns and operates in the neighborhood of 18,000+ servers. At least half of those (roughly), probably contain mission critical programs and data. The other half, that don't contain mission critical data per se, probably contain either 1) backups of mission critical applications for emergencies, 2) email, documents etc of every single employee (sensitive data). Now as long as JP gets the electricity that it needs who care where it comes from? It just needs to run its business. But the moment it lets important data out the door, all bets are off. Who accessed what? Is the network secure? Is the building physically secure from intrusion and corporate espionage? Does Morgan Stanley now know the JP automated trading strategies? and so on... Which is why I would say its not a no brainer to simply give up control of server infrastructure.

by jaydub 17y ago

mnemonicsloth 17y ago

Data is not fungible, but storage capacity is. Go ask Google if you don't believe me. Also, your A/B argument works about as well against commoditized electric power as it does against commoditized data storage. Why is it a no-brainer for company A to give up its generating infrastructure but not its server infrastructure? Yes, there will be a few exceptions like hospitals, which keep generators on site and have very strict confidentiality rules to observe. But in the main, if a factory can risk a temporary loss of power to all its machines and still come out ahead by dealing with a utility, why can't an office supply company also come out ahead by risking temporary loss of access to its CRM data?

jaydub 17y ago
First of all, the electrical grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid) is by this point a pretty well hardened and redundant infrastructure in major metropolitan areas. I do think that for startps and smaller companies, receiving and paying for storage/compute power like electricity is the way to go. But back for a moment to the A/B example. My point here is really with companies that are dealing with sensitive information. Let A = JP Morgan & B = Morgan Stanley. JP Morgan, I would guess (somewhat wildly) probably owns and operates in the neighborhood of 18,000+ servers. At least half of those (roughly), probably contain mission critical programs and data. The other half, that don't contain mission critical data per se, probably contain either 1) backups of mission critical applications for emergencies, 2) email, documents etc of every single employee (sensitive data). Now as long as JP gets the electricity that it needs who care where it comes from? It just needs to run its business. But the moment it lets important data out the door, all bets are off. Who accessed what? Is the network secure? Is the building physically secure from intrusion and corporate espionage? Does Morgan Stanley now know the JP automated trading strategies? and so on... Which is why I would say its not a no brainer to simply give up control of server infrastructure.