Why Web Applications won’t work for companies
September 5, 2006 at 9:44 pmI read an interesting article by Thomas Baekdal regarding why web applications won’t work for Enterprises. It’s regarding how companies has to trust the services where their data is stored and the lack of responsibility.
I agree - this is a huge problem! Before these kind of services such as web applications and online storage will become useful for the Enterprise it has to be solved. I see several different solutions to this problem.
First, there’s the issue that you have to trust the service provider when it comes to security. How can they guarantee that your data is not accessible to someone else? One solution could be that you encrypt the information so that not even the service provides know what you store. How you do it? Well, that’s a whole other problem.
Second issue is backup/restore. If you read the “terms of use” of most common services today, it’s very likely that you find that they can not be held responsible for any data loss. A solution for this could be that you manage the backup yourself, or make an agreement that makes sure the provider will handle this for you.
Third issue is reliability. The provider has their servers on the other site of the globe. Can they gurantee the availability of the service? What if your connection to the Internet goes down for a few hours. If you have hundreds of people who cannot work, you have a huge problem. Again, an agreement would have to be in place.
There are still issues. The future will tell how this can be solved for the Enterprise. Interesting solutions would be some kind of “webcache” locally at your site. Or maybe even a server replica of the service providers application. Of course, this is not an option for private individuals. But I’m sure that the future will tell how this will be solved.
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