Engineering in the Clouds

I am "worried about security, stability of cloud system providers, and version control of cloud-supported CAD systems." and cloud-supported analysis systems and cloud-supported financial applications- actually, just about anything other than e-mail and maybe sharing an occasional document or photo...

Don't look for me in the clouds. I will probably keep my feet firmly anchored to solid ground...

It seems to me that in addition to the very well-founded concerns already mentioned, there is the issue of available bandwidth. I am not familiar with cloud computing details but I'll bet that it consumes a lot of bandwidth. I am a subscriber to a local wireless network that provides service to about 400 homes via a series of radio transmitters and receivers connected to a high-speed fiber-optics provider. Since the recent advent of cloud computing, Netflix, and online video gaming, there are times that all of the available bandwidth is consumed by some number of users smaller than the total. The result is that many of us have virtually no bandwidth available and cannot even access the internet.

While the local network personnel are in the process of upgrading our equipment in a way that will limit the bandwidth that any one member can access, it seems to me that this is only yet another band-aid that will fall off when some other device(s) or technology emerges that requires more gobs of bandwidth. Maybe I am just naive about the whole concept and don't understand what is developing in the marketplace.

We get regular dropouts with our broadband connection, these may only last a few seconds & are hardly noticeable in normal use but would really screw up our CAD software. That has hissy fits if it loses our server connection even momentarily.

Another consideration is that, like many other companies, some of our major customers audit our security & back-up systems. These are the people who would have to be convinced that the cloud is safe before we would consider using it.