14 DAY TRIAL // With Windows Azure commercially available to customers as of the start of January 2010, Microsoft is at the avant-garde of Cloud computing, and the company is signaling that additional work needs to be done in order to change the public’s attitude toward the Cloud. Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, noted during a keynote speech to the Brookings Institution policy forum, “Cloud Computing for Business and Society,” that a change in attitude necessary for both the general population and business leaders to embrace the Cloud needs work from both members of the government and the information technology industry.
According to Smith, the future success of Cloud computing needs to have a few key criteria at its foundation, namely such factors as security and a guarantee of privacy, access and transparency. At the same time, any commitment to imposing rules and regulations needs to be done at an international level, with legislation set in place to not just ensure security and privacy but also force businesses in being transparent with customers, as well as deal with imminent issues related to cybercrime.
“The PC revolution empowered individuals and democratized technology in new and profoundly important ways,” Smith said. “As we move to embrace the cloud, we should build on that success and preserve the personalization of technology by making sure privacy rights are preserved, data security is strengthened and an international understanding is developed about the governance of data when it crosses national borders.”
A survey, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland, highlighted strong concerns related to Cloud computing. No less than 90% of the 700 members of the general population, 200 senior IT decision-makers and 200 senior business decision-makers surveyed expressed concerns related to security, privacy and access for Cloud-based offerings. This even though 58% of the general population and 86% of senior business leaders noted that they were excited with the potential of cloud computing.
“Microsoft is committed to fostering the responsible development of cloud computing to ensure that data is accessible, safe and secure. We also need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security. There is no doubt that the future holds even more opportunities than the present, but it also contains critical challenges that we must address now if we want to take full advantage of the potential of cloud computing,” Smith added.
It is clear that more needs to be done in order to convince customers to opt for services and applications running in a datacenter of a third-party company rather than on-premise. An integral part of the solution is Microsoft’s “Cloud Computing Advancement Act.” The Redmond company asks for the reforming and strengthening of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the updating of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. At the same time, Smith emphasized the need for a multilateral framework designed to tackle data access issues worldwide, and the establishing of universal truth-in-cloud-computing principles.