"THE" Cloud

[CougTek]

Every now and then, I hear someone, who generally thinks he's far more tech savvy than he really is, say that we should put this or that on THE Cloud. Not a particular Cloud like the Amazon Cloud, Azure, Google Cloud or, for people more gullible than average and famous people wanting to store their birthday suite pictures, the iCloud. Nope: THE Cloud. Like if it's a thing that exist.

It really gets on my nerves.

The Cloud is no more real than unicorns, the tooth fairy or the green dwarf sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's a (persistent) myth, a figment of the imagination, an urban legend, a...you get it.

People should get a clue and ask if it's a good idea to send their junk to a Cloud. Now that's a thing that exist. You can even get a private one if you want. But The Cloud? That's a fantasy. It's not like the Lord of the Rings where there's one ring to rule them all. There's no one Cloud to manage them all. Even if there would be one (and there isn't), it would be a government-controlled one and you wouldn't be able to access it unless working for the NSA or the chinese equivalent (or be quite a hacker).

The Cloud...go piss off with that.

 

[LunarMist]

Every now and then, I hear someone, who generally thinks he's far more tech savvy than he really is, say that we should put this or that on THE Cloud. Not a particular Cloud like the Amazon Cloud, Azure, Google Cloud or, for people more gullible than average and famous people wanting to store their birthday suite pictures, the iCloud. Nope: THE Cloud. Like if it's a thing that exist.

It really gets on my nerves.

The Cloud is no more real than unicorns, the tooth fairy or the green dwarf sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's a (persistent) myth, a figment of the imagination, an urban legend, a...you get it.

People should get a clue and ask if it's a good idea to send their junk to a Cloud. Now that's a thing that exist. You can even get a private one if you want. But The Cloud? That's a fantasy. It's not like the Lord of the Rings where there's one ring to rule them all. There's no one Cloud to manage them all. Even if there would be one (and there isn't), it would be a government-controlled one and you wouldn't be able to access it unless working for the NSA or the chinese equivalent (or be quite a hacker).

The Cloud...go piss off with that.

The people that developed that name were very deliberate in their purpose to be vague, diffuse responsibility, and cover up incompetence.
Consumers are not too bright and will repeat every new buzzword without cognition.
I just assume most of the clouds are already hacked in Chinese.

 

[jtr1962]

No, the cloud really does exist:

This is where your data goes when you send it to "the cloud". Unless of course this guy gets to it first (yes, he's real too and he's running the NSA):

 

[LunarMist]

Is that the Cloud Minders where the troglodytes were affected by the gas?

 

[Stereodude]

Every now and then, I hear someone, who generally thinks he's far more tech savvy than he really is, say that we should put this or that on THE Cloud. Not a particular Cloud like the Amazon Cloud, Azure, Google Cloud or, for people more gullible than average and famous people wanting to store their birthday suite pictures, the iCloud. Nope: THE Cloud. Like if it's a thing that exist.

It really gets on my nerves.

The Cloud is no more real than unicorns, the tooth fairy or the green dwarf sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's a (persistent) myth, a figment of the imagination, an urban legend, a...you get it.

Does it bother when people talk about saving something to "THE" server instead of using the server's name too? :bstd:

 

[Stereodude]

Is that the Cloud Minders where the troglodytes were affected by the gas?

No, that's in the other cloud.

 

[LunarMist]

No, that's in the other cloud.

It is after 1972?

 

[LunarMist]

Does it bother when people talk about saving something to "THE" server instead of using the server's name too? :bstd:

In a home office, they speak of the Citrix "farm." Sometimes I smell BS from IT, but it's not from the servers.

 

[CougTek]

Does it bother when people talk about saving something to "THE" server instead of using the server's name too? :bstd:

Yes, it does.

Also, too many employees refer to a shared folder as a "server". "Oh, you need to give her access to the HR server and also to the payment server". Of course, those two are simply shared folders sitting on the exact same file server. I gave up explaining this.

 

[Mercutio]

It's even more fun when my developers talk about THE server. Even if they're as remarkably specific as "the TEST server" I still have no idea the fuck they're talking about, since each of them has two or three VMs plus the two that are held for common use. I cringe any time I hear one of them use that word, since I know that I'll spend another five minutes trying to figure out which machine they actually want me to look at.

However, I am very careful to talk about A cloud rather than THE cloud and most of the people I deal with have picked up on that so at least I'm not having to deal with that one.

 

[Handruin]

The Cloud...someone else's shit and problems that I pay them to use and manage.

p.s. glad to see you back Coug. I miss posts like these.

 

[ddrueding]

I use "The Cloud" when talking to execs when making general points that are true for all of them.

1. Isn't accessible if you lose internet connection
2. Can be hacked without anyone at our company making an error
3. Is likely already compromised by several government agencies
4. Comes with some kind of recurring charge

 

[CougTek]

p.s. glad to see you back Coug. I miss posts like these.

I never realized that I was gone. I still visited the site regularly. It's just that I hadn't anything interesting to add.

 

[LunarMist]

I use "The Cloud" when talking to execs when making general points that are true for all of them.

1. Isn't accessible if you lose internet connection
2. Can be hacked without anyone at our company making an error
3. Is likely already compromised by several government agencies
4. Comes with some kind of recurring charge

Why would you say #3? That doesn't sound like a good selling point.

 

[CougTek]

Why would you say #3? That doesn't sound like a good selling point.

Yeah, the other three points are though, right?

 

[LunarMist]

They sound normal and fine to me. Why not?

 

[Handruin]

I never realized that I was gone. I still visited the site regularly. It's just that I hadn't anything interesting to add.

I just meant I haven't seen a post like this in a while and was happy to see new content from you.

 

[fb]

A wise IT-guy once said that we should replace the expression "the cloud" with "a server park in Ukraine". Like: "We should place all our critical business data in a server park in Ukraine."

 

[LunarMist]

A wise IT-guy once said that we should replace the expression "the cloud" with "a server park in Ukraine". Like: "We should place all our critical business data in a server park in Ukraine."

I don't know the Ukraine. In the US, we would say India or China.

 

[sedrosken]

I think the Ukraine applies as well. It's similarly far away, similarly dubious as to whether the service would actually work, etc.

 

[fb]

Here's a good use of the expression The Cloud

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-12-08

 

[Tannin]

Top thread. I second (fifth?) all of the above.

 

[Howell]

Our people somehow all believe "the cloud" is defined as in the internet and or services we do not have capital investment in.

 

[Mercutio]

Most of the businesses I deal with

* conduct a lot of their work via Email, via external servers
* Either don't make all that many local files or make huge numbers of PDFs that are basically images
* Interact with some weirdo irreplaceable legacy application that couldn't be rehosted in a zillion years.
* ... or else they're entering data in some national or international database system to begin with.
* Bitch and moan constantly about Intuit and the awfulness of Quickbooks, forced upgrades to Quickbooks

Their external web sites are mostly simple Wordpress things that live on my Dreamhost account already, or else they're pushing everyone to Facebook or in one case a Squarespace site.
They're backing up with Crashplan Pro and using Google for Email. Google Drive and Onedrive are available for data storage but no one uses those things.
Their credit processing is absolutely going to be external. Square or Bluepay or whatever.
Their business phones are probably VoIP or they're flat-out just using their cell phones anyway. Business phones are crazy expensive.
I generally build VPNs with Hamachi. This is probably the weakest "cloud" service I deal with, mostly because it depends so much on the Tunneling Driver and Service, both things that Windows likes to fuck with in OS updates and which doesn't handle power state changes on laptops very well. User education goes a long way with this and I'd rather tell somebody to reinstall the client every so often and have central management of end-points than have to manage settings on dozens of systems with no central authentication.
Many of them are on Office 365. A few of them have Sharepoint but don't do much with it, which is fine because I hate Sharepoint.

My latest project is trying to get people to switch to Quickbooks Online. In some cases the biggest resistance to that is the Accountant/Bookkeeper not being comfortable with that, but then I find out that everyone in the back office knows the Quickbooks password, that the backup drive is just being left in the Bookkeeper's PC all the time, that Quickbooks is run from the receptionist's PC - literally the first computer someone sees when they walk in. These are not people who are concerned about the security of their financial information in the first place and I'm convinced that Quickbooks Online will at least handle overall security for it better than they are. At least the cloud forces them to use 2FA, gives some mobile access, has constant backup and has some horde of information security guys trying to keep bad guys out, which is more than I have time to deal with.

For my customers ("A dozen people in an office someplace"), cloud stuff makes sense and other than the aforementioned weirdness with Hamachi, the biggest Cloud problem they really have is their internet service going down.

 

[Howell]

Truth

 

[LunarMist]

Most of the businesses I deal with

* conduct a lot of their work via Email, via external servers
* Either don't make all that many local files or make huge numbers of PDFs that are basically images
* Interact with some weirdo irreplaceable legacy application that couldn't be rehosted in a zillion years.
* ... or else they're entering data in some national or international database system to begin with.
* Bitch and moan constantly about Intuit and the awfulness of Quickbooks, forced upgrades to Quickbooks

Their external web sites are mostly simple Wordpress things that live on my Dreamhost account already, or else they're pushing everyone to Facebook or in one case a Squarespace site.
They're backing up with Crashplan Pro and using Google for Email. Google Drive and Onedrive are available for data storage but no one uses those things.
Their credit processing is absolutely going to be external. Square or Bluepay or whatever.
Their business phones are probably VoIP or they're flat-out just using their cell phones anyway. Business phones are crazy expensive.
I generally build VPNs with Hamachi. This is probably the weakest "cloud" service I deal with, mostly because it depends so much on the Tunneling Driver and Service, both things that Windows likes to fuck with in OS updates and which doesn't handle power state changes on laptops very well. User education goes a long way with this and I'd rather tell somebody to reinstall the client every so often and have central management of end-points than have to manage settings on dozens of systems with no central authentication.
Many of them are on Office 365. A few of them have Sharepoint but don't do much with it, which is fine because I hate Sharepoint.

My latest project is trying to get people to switch to Quickbooks Online. In some cases the biggest resistance to that is the Accountant/Bookkeeper not being comfortable with that, but then I find out that everyone in the back office knows the Quickbooks password, that the backup drive is just being left in the Bookkeeper's PC all the time, that Quickbooks is run from the receptionist's PC - literally the first computer someone sees when they walk in. These are not people who are concerned about the security of their financial information in the first place and I'm convinced that Quickbooks Online will at least handle overall security for it better than they are. At least the cloud forces them to use 2FA, gives some mobile access, has constant backup and has some horde of information security guys trying to keep bad guys out, which is more than I have time to deal with.

For my customers ("A dozen people in an office someplace"), cloud stuff makes sense and other than the aforementioned weirdness with Hamachi, the biggest Cloud problem they really have is their internet service going down.

Nobody uses SAP or Oracle? We have numerous others apps but everything seems to feed into those two in some way or another.

 

[Chewy509]

Nobody uses SAP or Oracle? We have numerous others apps but everything seems to feed into those two in some way or another.

Depends on the business size. SAP/Oracle (at least here in Oz) deployments start at AU$250K for the bare basic accounts system with ongoing annual support fees. Certainly not going to see it in SMB areas.

In contrast QuickBooks, MYOB and Xero are roughly AU$1K deployments with very low support fees. Even even looking at MS Dynamics (or whatever they call their ERP suite these days), these are still 1/2 the price of Oracle/SAP.

Way back (10yrs+ ago) when I worked as IT Manager for a Pharmaceutical manufacturer, I spoke with all the major ERP/MRP-II software houses at changing the companies MRP-II system, and the guys both at Oracle and SAP politely indicated that a deployment needed to cover the companies business (accounts, stock management and manufacturing JIT processes) would not be under $1M and take 6+mths... In contrast, both Pronto Xi (a local company) and MFG PRO who could both met our requirements with off-the-shelf components were less AU$200K, including 5yrs support fees and a 1mth deployment/test/onsite training phase...

@Merc, have you looked at Xero.com as a possible cloud based system? (Xero.com is taking a lot of marketshare away from Intuit/MYOB here).

 

[Mercutio]

No, because absolutely the only thing that anyone uses is Quickbooks. To put it another way, I support some folks who use PerfectOffice in place of MS Office. I don't support anyone who uses anything but Quickbooks.
Lunar, the largest organization I directly support has, at last count, 43 employees. And most of them are salespeople whom I've never met. I don't get near Oracle or SAP. I think my life is better for it.

 

[LunarMist]

Those two dissimilar metals in contact are a really bad idea. You know there will he a redox reaction and corrosion if there is any humidity.

 

[timwhit]

Those two dissimilar metals in contact are a really bad idea. You know there will he a redox reaction and corrosion if there is any humidity.

Wrong thread?

 

[LunarMist]

Wrong thread?

Wrong forum entirely. :crap: My Andorid updated today, so that probably has something to do with it.

 

[Stereodude]

Wrong forum entirely. :crap: My Andorid updated today, so that probably has something to do with it.

That's very unlikely... *cough* user error */cough*

 

[LunarMist]

What do you mean, user? It is my phone and nobody else uses it.

 

[LunarMist]

No, because absolutely the only thing that anyone uses is Quickbooks. To put it another way, I support some folks who use PerfectOffice in place of MS Office. I don't support anyone who uses anything but Quickbooks.
Lunar, the largest organization I directly support has, at last count, 43 employees. And most of them are salespeople whom I've never met. I don't get near Oracle or SAP. I think my life is better for it.

Damn. I suppose working with very small companies requires significantly different skills from the larger organizations.
I'm not allowed to work with most smaller companies. Many leaders don't want to take the risk that they shut down suddenly or the principals die in the plane crash, etc.

MBH

 

[Mercutio]

My value stems from knowing "enough" about lots and lots of things. Big companies have specialists who are cross-trained to across maybe one other area of related responsibility and that's a level of specialization I can't afford to take the time to reach.

 

[Tannin]

I support anyone who uses anything except Quickbooks.

MYOB has a few problems, nothing I can't handle.
Cashflow Manager support work is a joy. Basically there isn't any. It just works.
Xero never causes problems.

"Hello, is that you Tannin?"
"Yes. How can I help?"

"I'm having some problems with Quickbooks."
"Sorry. I'm busy today."

"OK. Tomorrow then?"
"Can't make tomorrow. Sorry."

"What about next week?"
"I'll be in Queensland."

"Queensland? Oh good. So will I. We could meet up and you could fix my Quickbooks.".
"Woops! I meant Tasmania, of course."

"Fine, how about November?"
"Nope. I'll be on sick leave."

"Dercember?"
"Long service leave."

"January next year?"
"Away on a course."

"February?"
"Too busy."

"March?"
"Washing my hair."

"April?"
"Tasmania again. Unless your Quickbooks problem follows me, in which case, maybe Darwin."

"May?"
"Sorry, can't hear you. Your phone is breaking up."

"Beaking up? It can't be, I'm on a landline. Can't you fix my Quickbooks?"
"Oh, well it must be my phone then. I don't understand it. It usually works fine. Let me just try something."

"OK."
"There, that should do it. I've wrapped it in tin foil, dipped it in butter and put it in the oven. I'll just turn the gas on. "

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

Click.

Works every time.

 

[Stereodude]

What do you mean, user? It is my phone and nobody else uses it.

So now then who do you think I could have possibly been referring to? You're almost there...

 

[snowhiker]

MBH

^^^ Might want to see a doctor.

 

[LunarMist]

I had surgery years ago, so that is not a problem.

Another annoyance with the CLOUD is that the Dr. could not access my medical records when there was a connectivity issue.

 

[Stereodude]

HRB