MoneyWatch Tech

After Microsoft Danger Debacle, EMC Touts Private Cloud

By Michael Hickins

Updated on: October 19, 2009 / 2:55 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

The customer data that Danger, Microsoft's mobile subsidiary, lost two weeks ago, found again, but hasn't been able to replace exactly, has left Microsoft with more than egg on its face; it may have mortally wounded its Azure cloud platform strategy as well.

Enterprise customers are going to start using cloud computing in some form or fashion in the near future, for a number of reasons:

it's significantly less expensive to lease infrastructure and outsource the management of that infrastructure than to own and run it internally;
even if some customers won't run strategic applications or store critical data in the cloud, they'll still find that it's more effective to run commodity applications and storage in the cloud;
beyond the savings in capital expenditures and human resources, cloud infrastructure can expand or contract based on need, so customers don't have to over-provision their data centers to ensure they have enough computing capacity during peak times; and
corporate boards will increasingly want to prove their "green" credentials, and by reducing the overall amount of power consumed by data centers, cloud computing gives them that "cover" (I couldn't resist the pun).

But what IT administrator is going to recommend using a vendor whose most publicized experience with cloud computing to date is the loss of close to a million sets of customer data? And which over the years became a poster child for cyber-insecurity and the resultant need for Patch Tuesdays?

And if the whole Microsoft/Danger fiasco has left IT managers feeling a little insecure about the cloud in general, then reliable, staid EMC (which, with the acquisition of RSA, also increased its 'security clearance'), is offering its version of the "private cloud" as an alternative that's sure to be more appealing to traditional, risk-averse enterprise IT managers.

The idea of the private cloud is that while the infrastructure is outsourced, the customer -- and not the vendor -- retain control, however remote, over management of the infrastructure, as EMC vice president Chuck Hollis blogged:

One of the key concepts of private clouds is the notion of control: IT has the option to remain in control, and not the service provider. Sure, the service provider is responsible for whatever they've committed to -- but IT is capable of monitoring that the work is being done, and being done correctly.

The data loss that's leaving Microsoft at a loss for words was apparently caused by shoddy back-up procedures by Danger's mobile carrier business partner, T-Mobile. Hollis' argument is that with private clouds, customers can monitor the practices of their outsourcers, ensuring that processes are performed exactly as they should be, rather than just as promised by the vendor.

In fact, this Microsoft debacle couldn't have come at a better time for EMC, a storage vendor that is embracing a technology that could disrupt its core infrastructure business by creating a new weather pattern of its own -- an El Nino within the larger cloud -- that represents green for its customers and potentially more green for its P&L.