I got quite a few comments on last week’s WXPnews article, Betting the Company on the Cloud: Sure Thing or Long Shot? (Go to Archives, March 9, 2010) and my blog post, Cloudy Days Ahead, so I’ve been doing more thinking about the “Cloud” and have some additional thoughts on the subject.
I was recently elected president of our homeowners’ association. I volunteered to serve on the board of directors not because I wanted to exercise power over my neighbors, but because I want to keep ours from turning into one of those oppressive HOAs from Hell that I’ve heard so much about. And I’ve been thinking lately that the “cloud” is a little like an HOA.
The premise of an HOA is that all those who live in a neighborhood pool resources, which can be more cost effective and provides more convenience for homeowners. Maybe every homeowner can’t afford to build and maintain a pool, so the HOA collects a little money from everybody and maintains a pool that everyone can use. Some HOAs (not ours) mow and weed and maintain all the front yards, paid for out of the homeowners’ dues, so residents don’t have to worry about lawn care. Others have elaborate clubhouses and exercise rooms for members’ use. Some put up electronic gates to keep non-residents out of the community. Of course, the more amenities, the more you pay.
The Cloud is a little like that. Instead of each company maintaining its own IT department, the cloud provider collects money from all of them and all the companies get the use of the provider’s equipment and personnel. The provider does the maintenance so you don’t have to worry about it. The provider may also offer extra amenities; in addition to hosting your web server, they may design and update your web site for an extra fee. And the provider takes care of securing the “community” of servers that it hosts.
The HOA is a wonderful idea in concept. In practice, sometimes not so much. Here are the problems I see with some HOAs, and which the cloud needs to guard against:
- In the beginning, HOAs were mostly voluntary. Now most of them are mandatory. If you live in the neighborhood, you have to belong to the association whether you want to or not. If you never use the community pool or gym, you still have to pay for it. Some cities have even passed ordinances that require all new subdivisions built in the city have HOAs.
- In the beginning, HOAs were managed by the boards themselves, perhaps hiring one full-time manager whose office was on premises or nearby. Today, most HOAs are managed by professional property management companies hired by the board. Their offices may be many miles away from the neighborhood and the manager doesn’t live in the community and have the same personal stake in it. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this, but it does put yet another layer of bureaucracy into the process.
- HOAs are supposed to be concerned only with the good of the neighborhood and its residents. Too many associations have evolved to benefit the few who have the time and inclination to get involved, and some of those tend to be folks who like to bully their neighbors and tell others what to do for the sake of power itself, rather than for the sake of bettering the neighborhood, or people who like spending OPM (other people’s money) on things like “fact finding” trips for board members or “socials” that only a tiny portion of the residents attend.
- Some HOAs get so concerned with generating revenue that they start acting as if they think they’re profit-making organizations. As quasi-governmental bodies, they adopt the spendthrift attitude so common in governmental entities at all levels today, and start to see fines as a way to make money, rather than a last resort with the purpose of persuading homeowners to comply with the rules.
- In keeping with that, some HOAs are rule-happy. They try to control aspects of homeowners’ lives that have no effect on the neighborhood, just “because we can.” Of course, the more rules you have, the more difficult it is for everyone to be in compliance with all of them, and thus the more you can fine them and rake in the cash for your own pet projects.
I’m lucky in that I happened into a neighborhood where the HOA is not like the ones I’ve been describing. Dues are low and have stayed stable, we’ve experienced no “special assessments,” fines are used for the proper purpose and the board is understanding of homeowners who have special circumstances and ready and willing to work with them. Our HOA doesn’t provide many amenities – a pool and maintenance and landscaping of that common area and the lovely entries into the neighborhood – and so it doesn’t need a lot of money. My goal is to keep it that way.
So what does all this have to do with the cloud?
You might scoff at the idea that it might someday be mandatory to get your applications over the Internet and store your data remotely, and I’m not suggesting that there will be laws prohibiting you from doing it all yourself – but if the market falls head over heels in love with the cloud and software vendors stop making operating systems that are designed for local computing and stop selling non-cloud applications and hardware vendors only offer low powered computers that are designed for accessing cloud-based resources and not for running local apps, there might as well be a law. If the market for full fledged systems and applications becomes small, those things will become much more costly (if they don’t disappear altogether), effectively forcing us all to the cloud. This isn’t going to happen next week or next year, but it could happen.
Once the cloud is your only choice, look for cloud providers to raise their prices and become more controlling and less responsive to what the customers want. Don’t believe me? Just look at cable TV service during the recent period when that was the only way many people could get television programming. In the beginning, cable companies charged low rates and offered commercial-free programming. Once they had most people dependent on them, rates skyrocketed, cable channels started advertising just like OTA channels, and CATV companies became notorious for poor customer service. Even now, as we’re beginning to have more choices (Internet TV, fiber optic options like FiOS and U-verse), few cable companies have changed their attitudes. Once an industry becomes arrogant, it’s hard to break the habit.
As more and more customers flock to the cloud, look for providers to start outsourcing some or all of their work, just as the HOAs contract with management companies. That will put another layer of “cloudiness” between you and your apps and data.
Cloud providers, unlike HOAs and government agencies, are already in business to make money. When they have you “locked in,” expect them to start tacking on extra fees (think banks) in addition to the outright price increases, to bring in more money. Also look for them to become more and more controlling. After all, they have to “protect” you and your data from all the bad things that can happen, so of course they will need to set rules about how you use their services. EULAs are already masterpieces of contractual writing that give the companies the rights to everything except your first-born child (unless that’s buried somewhere in the print that’s so fine I’m unable to read it) and disclaiming all liability on their part for everything, any time, anywhere. Can they really get more heinous? I don’t know if I want to find out.
The good news is that the cloud is in its infancy. There’s still time to do it right and avoid all these mistakes. In my opinion, the first and most important way to do that is for software vendors to see the cloud as a supplement to traditional personal computing, not a replacement for it. Don’t let the cloud become mandatory. That, alone, will nip most of the other problems in the bud. It’s good to have choices, and the cloud should be one of those choices – just not the only one.
