How cloud vendors can be evil?

How cloud vendors can be evil?
Cloud computing is gaining a lot of attention nowadays, because cloud hosts are faster, offer a lot of space online, and the best part they are cheap. These are the few reasons that are attracting users to adopt clouds for there online storage needs. But here’s the question that kept me bugging for a long time: How cloud vendors can be evil?
Well, the answer to the above question can be traced back to the era of Mainframes (Centralised Computing). The mainframe users sufferred from the changes in the software (due to updates, upgrades, etc.) without any prior notifications. Talking about data storage, as all the user’s files are stored in a centralised storage, if the communication link is down, the user will not be able to access them. All these problems, led to the rise of personal computers in 1980s.
The same reasons are very well applicable in Cloud scenario too. In cloud scenario, the users may suffer from vendor close downs, in such a case the vendor gives a limited time to it’s users to download all there data from the cloud, if they haven’t backup that up on there personal computers. A yet another scenario, certain free cloud vendors might convert to paid services, forcing users to pay for accessing their own data.
A feature that one should look for while choosing a cloud vendor is the ability to move the data seemlessly in the cloud, if in future one plans to switch vendors. Otherwise, user will become a victim of the vicious cycle of downloading, managing and re-uploading data. As, Schofield’s first law of computing says:
Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out
Also, consider an example of banks

Cloud computing is gaining a lot of attention nowadays, because cloud hosts are faster, offer a lot of space online, and the best part they are cheap. These are the few reasons that are attracting users to adopt clouds for there online storage needs. But here’s the question that kept me bugging for a long time: How cloud vendors can be evil?

Well, the answer to the above question can be traced back to the era of Mainframes (Centralised Computing). The mainframe users sufferred from the changes in the software (due to updates, upgrades, etc.) without any prior notifications. Talking about data storage, as all the user’s files are stored in a centralised storage, if the communication link is down, the user will not be able to access them. All these problems, led to the rise of personal computers in 1980s.

The same reasons are very well applicable in Cloud scenario too. In cloud scenario, the users may suffer from vendor close downs, in such a case the vendor gives a limited time to it’s users to download their data from the cloud, if they haven’t backup that up on their personal computers. A yet another scenario, certain free cloud vendors might convert to paid services, forcing users to pay for accessing their own data.

A feature that one should look for while choosing a cloud vendor is the ability to move the data seemlessly in the cloud, if in future one plans to switch vendors. Otherwise, user will become a victim of the vicious cycle of downloading, managing and re-uploading data. As, Schofield’s first law of computing says:

Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out

Also, cloud vendors should take inspiration from banks. People use banks because banks operates on certain standards and laws, which enables easier movement of money from one bank to another for bank customers. Cloud vendors should also frame certain laws and standards, that will enable moving of data from one cloud vendor to another in future.