Protection how does the provider protect against contamination, accidental deletion or copying, or hardware failures?ĭeletion does delete really mean delete, including from backups? Or is your data sensitive enough that you would want the storage media physically destroyed to prevent recovery? Service availability what commitments does the provider make for the availability of your data, and what can you do if your data is unavailable? Viability of the company and/or service – some cloud storage companies have disappeared or have withdrawn a service at short notice.Ĭonnectivity – does the provider support access from the devices you use?
In addition, and as part of informing your review of the terms of service, you need to think about items such as: If the language used is so complex or they give obscure answers that you can t understand it, then move on: there are providers who do take the time to write terms of service in plain English. Likewise, the provider s website should have answers to the questions you are likely to ask. Make sure you understand them, and, more importantly, that you re happy with the roles and responsibilities of both you and the service provider. Yes, read the terms and conditions for the service. However, if your data has intrinsic value or, potentially worse, would cause damage if it were revealed in some way, then you really need to conduct some checks before committing to a particular service provider. If all you store in the cloud is files that you would openly publish on the web, or don t mind losing, then you probably won t care much about such terms and conditions.
What the negative reactions to these types of legal notices do show is that providers need to communicate the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the clearest possible terms, including those using the service. In the case of Google, there may have been added public concern as it came so soon after Google was obliged to explain the implications of its move to consolidate the privacy policies across all of its services, into a single policy. The terms do make clear that these rights were required for the operation and improvement of the Google Drive service but this is a remarkably broad definition I think it is also worth noting that other services have similar legal terms associated with their use, with others, who were earlier into the market, had to issue clarifications that they in no way were seeking to take ownership of the data stored with their services. Words such as these caused quite a reaction, with one article describing them as a toxic brew. I m sure some users were surprised to see that Google retained the right to, for example, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute your data. When Google Drive launched last week, people s attention was quickly drawn to the terms of service, which a user will be bound by if they upload their data. With Dropbox reportedly storing some 100 billion files by May 2011, and Amazon claiming that their Simple Storage Service (S3) contained some 905 billion “objects” at end of the first quarter of 2012, the last year appears to show a growing mass market adoption of cloud storage. Storage has become a commodity and this allows businesses to offer services that promise to take away the routine housekeeping that goes with storing your data, for a price that makes it attractive. Whereas 40 years ago 1 Gigabyte of hard disk storage would have cost over 1.8m (assuming you could have produced it), today it costs pennies to produce. Each has its own technical merits: some can be accessed from a greater range of devices some provide support for editing document types using applications that are provided via your browser and so on. Many of us use services, essentially IaaS, to store our files online with services such as Dropbox, Microsoft s SkyDrive, Amazon s Simple Storage Service (S3), Apple s iCloud, and perhaps a relative late comer, launched last week, Google Drive.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) where providers offer access to what appears to be computer hardware, such as disk storage or servers. Platform as a Service (PaaS) where providers offer use of a server with, for example, a database system already installed, onto which a user installs and runs their own applications
#Yahoo cloud storage free install#
Software as a Service (SaaS) providers install and operate applications for users to access over the internet, ranging from simple office processing to complex customer relationship management systems It can be thought of as three layers, each built upon the layer below: Technology is awash with buzzwords, and one of the most used recently is cloud computing.
0 kommentar(er)
