With cloud computing all data storage takes place remotely, but is it possible to accept such free services as reliable, writes GORDON SMITH

THE TECHNOLOGY industry is betting heavily on cloud computing being the new model to deliver services, but have we a right to expect high levels of reliability from sites we pay nothing to use?

Anyone who uses Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo, social networks like Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn, blogging tools, Twitter, or photo sharing sites Flickr or Picasa, is using cloud computing technology.

With the cloud model, all that is needed is a web browser to access the services. All of the data processing and storage takes place remotely – via the ‘‘cloud’’ – at large data centres with enough capacity to serve millions of people at the same time.

But could this approach also be the Achilles’ heel that drags the cloud down to Earth? One of cloud computing’s most vocal advocates, Google, suffered a significant outage in its Gmail service on September 2nd, lasting 100 minutes. Last month Twitter, Facebook and the blogging site LiveJournal also had outages.

Google described it as a “big deal”, and it follows similar incidents in February, March and May.

“We have invested a huge amount in our infrastructure to ensure outages do not occur,” said Ronan Harris, director of online sales with Google Europe. “I would not guarantee against it happening again, but it will be about how we respond to it.”

Harris defended the company’s record, saying the average downtime for e-mail in a business environment was 53 minutes per month. “We put out a service level that’s significantly better than that.”

A spokesperson for Yahoo said: “All internet services will naturally experience downtime at some point in time due to various factors – whether these services are being delivered by cloud services has no bearing on availability.”

Without cloud computing technology and the huge economies of scale it brings, Harris questioned whether Google could provide these services for free. Yahoo differs, saying that using cloud services is not related to the decision to offer them for free.

Competition ensures providers offer users a good experience on their sites, added Harris. “We are very cognisant of the fact people moving to another service is an easy decision and only a click away,” he said. “If we did deteriorate the service, people would move on.”

Joe Drumgoole, CEO of Cloudsplit, said consumers should be prepared to put up with the occasional outage in return for services that do not cost anything.

“Gmail is not a business mail service and it’s not mission-critical – it’s not a heart and lung machine in a hospital. It’s what you sign up for when you use a free online e-mail service,” he said.

“The Gmail outage is a storm in a teacup. More interesting questions about cloud computing are, what if a provider gets sold, or goes bust, or changes its terms of service? Who is providing the hosting? Ultimately, it needs to be someone you trust. We all trust Google because it doesn’t cost us to trust them.”

Drumgoole has set up several businesses using cloud technology, and he said it was the most cost-effective way of doing so. He added that cloud services were also more reliable than traditional ways of providing IT.

Nonetheless, he advised consumers not to use the cloud as the only place to store data. “If you wanted to take all of your photos off Flickr, that is a challenge for most users. Getting it back is as important as putting it up there,” he said.

“My standard advice is, never throw away your originals. Keep them on your PC as well, and use the cloud services to mirror what you have at home,” he said.

Another drawback with the cloud computing model is that even if the provider’s service is available, there’s the small matter of connecting to it in the first place.

Many Irish internet users have suffered loss of service recently.

On September 3rd, Eircom suffered a service outage which left customers off-line for more than five hours, and earlier this week, scheduled maintenance on parts of UPC’s network in Dublin meant some broadband subscribers were without internet access for parts of a morning.

Service availability is not the only concern over cloud computing. Questions of privacy and security are also starting to emerge.

With the cloud model, users do not physically possess the data they create, since it is stored off-site, and possibly out of the country, by the service provider.

The location of these IT systems affects the data protection regimes governing them. Services hosted in the United States, for example, are bound by the Patriot Act rather than EU Data Protection Law.

Here, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is starting to take a closer look at cloud services.

“Such service providers so far appear to be taking account of their data protection responsibilities, including from a security perspective,” said assistant commissioner Diarmuid Hallinan, who warned there may be “jurisdictional issues” involved about where providers store data.

“We are particularly concerned about the regulatory structures to which these service providers are subject, if any, and we continue to engage with the service providers about these concerns,” he said.

Hallinan advised people to check the security and privacy features of internet services before using them.