Amazon Fire & The cloud...

WSJ has an article today explaining how Amazon is planning to use it's own cloud to help add behind-the-scenes power to the new Fire tablet. Amazon has essentially made a shift in the tablet market by creating a "thin-client" tablet which uses the cloud to do most of the processing and the device to simply render what's needed.  Seems efficient - and keeps the price of the Fire under $200. Sounds great right? The article goes on to raise privacy concerns, so as your Fire is rendering websites via Amazon's cloud - amazon is collecting all that data, gaining huge insights into  where people are going, buying, etc. Additionally, there may be costs to amazon to apply the cloud computing power on a large-scale to massive amounts of Fire users.

The real interesting development here is the obvious shift and reliance on cloud computing. Apple is introducing it's cloud services in a limited way, Amazon is linking it directly to devices - but it all goes back to benefit to consumers, but also how the cloud gives these companies access (via privacy policies that no one reads) to the user's data - music habits, purchasing habits, browsing, etc - all this is collected already via other mechanisms - but the web is tightening so that any action a users performs on any of their devices (phone, tablet, PC, TV, DVD player, Wii, etc.) is ultimately obtained by a handful of companies and used for future commercial gain.

Emerging Technology Starter

Read the WSJ Today? John Bussey wrote an article describing how SMBs are now looking to the cloud for data security (WSJ, 16 Sep, "Seeking Safety in the Clouds"). Concepts or themes that may have been "emerging" less than a year ago can shoot straight towards mainstream in no time. The article describes the benefits of outsourcing IT services toa cloud provider, primarily focused on security; that argument being that the cloud provide likely know more about security and is a better position to secure a SMBs data than the individuals running the SMB.

Makes sense, right? Except that the cloud still has plenty of potential concerns and potential security risks that need to be mitigated in order to properly secure the data. The cloud still sounds like an emerging technology to a SMBs and Security is the  PRIME reason many SMBs don't use the cloud (Bussey quotes a study by IDC, stating that 72% of small business with under 100 employees cite security as prime reason for not utilizing cloud services (63% for medium sized businesses)) -- this can be addressed and will be a major point to address for the TouchPoints capstone project. Developing a cloud security process and infrastructure will be key to selling cloud services to SMBs.