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Section 1: Basic Concepts
Concept of the Cloud
The IT term “ cloud” is short for two related concepts. For the man on the street, it can just mean the internet and that is acceptable1. For the IT initiate, it would be “cloud computing” which is the delivery of on-demand computing services (e.g. applications) to clients via the internet from server farms of the service provider.
These services are applications and databases which reside in the vendor’s various locations unknown to the customers. Google and Facebook are there in the cloud. Such architecture allows the type of service called Software as a Service (SaaS) where the customer does not spend for infrastructure but pays for the use of vendor’s applications usually on a per transaction basis. 2
When we apply the concept of the cloud to data storage, this creates the schema of data repositories that can be accessed by customers over the web. Logically the customer will see only one folder or files but these may be spread over several servers. The service is that data storage is made available to the customer like a local disk drive but the physical data is actually somewhere else. It is like a locker box in the train station where you can go anytime and store or pick up things. 3
Cloud storage starts usually to become relevant when many data transfers cannot be done by email because of the ISP’s limitations. The need for offsite data storage can also be addressed by cloud storage. It is therefore critical that the internet speed is fast enough to
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1 Joanna Stern, 2012. "What is the 'Cloud'?". abc NEWS.
2 Eric Knorr, 2008. "What cloud computing really means". InfoWorld.
3 "Understanding cloud storage services: A guide for beginners", 2010. TechTarget.
upload and download data without too much delay. Cloud storage can either be used for operations or for archiving data.
Technical Requirements
If you can treat cloud storage as your remote hard disk, then it must have as adequate a capacity. One distinctive feature of cloud storage against local storage is its ability to scale for the customer because the service provider has massive amounts of storage to provide for charge. One can start with 5 TB and continue scaling up to 10 TB every 6 months or even scale down at the same rate. The customer would not want to pay for too much unused storage. This feature is called elasticity and keeps the cost of ownership down for the customer which is the cost of setting up operational and back-up data. 4
In relation, there should be a service metering system that will accurately compute for costs of services provided 5. A customer’s data can be dispersed in several physical locations. Even I they are far apart, the processing time should still be acceptable for the customer. Even in the case of a server breakdown, there should be redundancy and a switch-over which again should be transparent to the customer.
Cloud storage also requires compliance to a unique identification system that allows policies to be created and automated management possible. Unique identifiers are used instead of physical addresses for data access. The cloud storage solution should integrate seamlessly with the existing network and facilities of the customer. It should also support all kinds of applications that will access the data regardless of their interface. There should also be data security from id’s and passwords much like the guest account in the personal computer.
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4 Rachel Kossman, 2012. "Defining cloud storage: Nine cloud requirements to know".
5 Sheng Liang & Peder Ulander, 2010. "7 Requirements for Building Your Cloud Infrastructure". CIO.
The most critical requirement to make cloud storage viable would be the internet bandwidth. It should be fast enough to make waiting times for data transfer tolerable. This is actually the biggest trade-off for local storage. The customer must have a good internet service provider that can offer high-speed internet access.
Motivation and Benefits
Lawyers spend much time on field and with portable computers and mobile gadgets at hand, cloud storage would be most complementary to their operations. Email will not always be sufficient for the lawyers’ voluminous documents because of limited storage which cloud storage will not encounter 6. This benefit will also be strongly felt by clients. As long as there is internet available, the lawyers can work alone or with clients.
The law firm need not maintain or outsource IT staff for data management as the cloud vendor will do all that. All they need to do is to learn how to use and keep the account active. There would be less office concerns that are not for lawyering.
Cloud storage would also provide an excellent option for the critical function of data back-up for the law firm. Back-up data is replicated, distributed and synched in separate places. It would be reliable and safer because it is off-premises. Related also is the concern of business continuity. Fires or natural calamities would no longer be a concern regarding data preservation. Even temporary causes like floods or power failures can be circumvented as long there is internet in nearby places. 7
Another critical concern is data security which is also taken care of by the cloud vendor. There is assurance that the best tools such as data encryption and virus scanning are being
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6 “Maximum email size limit for Gmail, Outlook.com, etc", 2013. Outlook Apps.
7 Rick Delgado, 2015. "5 Ways Small Businesses Benefit From Cloud Storage". CMS Report.
used by IT experts. Unlike small businesses, these vendors have dedicated teams just for data security. 8
Legal Issues
In Australia, the technology of cloud computing encounters issues relating to the Australian Privacy Law. Australian companies are bound by this legislation to do all means to protect the privacy on its stakeholders. Principle 8 concerns cross-border disclosure and this situation apply because data from Australians can physically reside in the servers of cloud computing vendors. Principle 11 is about the duty to protect from “misuse, interference and other security related issues”. 9
In cloud storage, turning over the data for storage to the vendor can be tantamount to passing responsibility that is required by the Privacy law. The Law states that the responsibility and accountability will remain to reside with the Australian cloud customer as if the data is within Australian territory. This highlights the fact that increased legal exposure is the trade-off that one gets by availing of the many benefits of cloud storage. 11
Taking out insurance for your data may be a solution but care must be taken that the conditions of cloud storage will not turn out to be exclusion in the contract. Cyber liability insurance can address data breaches and losses. 12
Perhaps the more important contract to consider would be the one with the cloud vendor. The provisions must also address requirements of Australian laws like the Privacy Law. Most likely, the vendor would not be Australian and any dispute would have to consider the laws
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8 Chad Brooks, 2014. "8 Benefits of Online Data Storage". Business News Daily.
9 Guy Betar, 2015. "The real risks of moving to the cloud". CIO.
10 Jonathan Strickland, 2008. "How Cloud Storage Works". HowStuffWorks.
11 "What is Cyber Liability Insurance?", n.d.. The Hartford.
of the vendor’s country. This can prove to be complicated.
Law firms hold confidential, sensitive and potentially damaging data and would doubly be liable if unlawful disclosure damages clients. Contracts with cloud storage providers must compel the utmost safety of data.
Section 2: Best Three Alternatives
The law firm will consider Amazon S3, Microsoft's Windows Azure Storage and Google Cloud Storage for its shortlist 12. The following criteria will be used to select the best service for the law firm: ease of use, reliability, scalability, speed, security and features.
Reliability refers to the percentage of time that data access transactions are successful. The data request must connect every time and the transaction completed whether it is uploading or downloading. A related aspect is the financial stability of the company where we do not want a bulk data migration because the vendor closed shop 13. Features will include usability, file sharing and bandwidth economy.
Security must be presented in terms of the techniques used such as data encryption, authentication, authorization, etc 14. It would be hard to inspect the vendor’s security facilities. The absence of any reports of security breaches would at the moment be enough to assume a good rating for the vendor.
Amazon S3
It stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service and is Amazon’s product that is suitable for small businesses. It is secure, reliable and highly scalable and would require the administration of IT professionals. It is user friendly with a simple web service interface that users can use ___________
12 Brandon Butler, 2013. "Gartner: Top 10 cloud storage providers". NETWORKWORLD.
13 Jonathan Strickland, 2008. "How Cloud Storage Works". HowStuffWorks.
14 Ibid
anywhere where there is internet. The S3 cloud is distributed across 12 regions in the world and you can choose what region your data will reside. Reliability is implemented by data replication where several copies of your data are stored in different locations.
There is also version control to assure availability of files. It also has a transfer acceleration technology that speeds up data transfer 15. For security, it has a key management service for managing encryption keys. S3 is economical as you pay only for the storage that you use. Alerts can also be set-up to monitor current billing.
S3 uses object storage where files and their location identifiers are put together as objects which can be accessed by the object ID’s. It offers different storage classes for different purposes like S3 Standard for general-purpose frequently accessed files, S3 Standard-IA for long lived and infrequently accessed data and Glacier for long-term archival data. Cost is lower as data is less frequently accessed.
It is capable of setting policies that will manage data throughout its life cycle. Policies allow data to be automatically migrated to their suitable storage class and are transparent to the applications using the data. S3 is also programmable with its own SW development kit (SDK). Other functions are back-up and recovery, archiving, big data analytics, disaster recovery and content distribution. 16
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
MAS offers scalability, reliability and availability for its storage solution. It also allows developers to develop applications for usage scenarios. The scalability of data ranges from small amounts of data in a website to hundreds of terabytes of data for data analysis.________________________
15 "Transfer files into Amazon S3 up to 300% faster", 2016. Amazon Web Services.
16 "Amazon S3", n.d. Amazon Web Services.
Applications are also scalable depending on the amount of data to be used. MAS is cost-efficient in that you only pay for the data you use and only when you use it.
Data reliability is by storing data twice on devices and in the comprehensive set of data stored in the cloud. Reliability is also further enhanced by data replication which can be in three levels: local as in the same facility, zone as data is in different facilities in the same region and geo where data is copied across facilities in different geo locations. The software itself is reliable; acquired from the pioneer Cleversafe 17, it has tens of trillions of customer objects and handles millions of requests per second on average.
MAS has an auto-partitioning system that load balances the data transfers based on the traffic. It will automatically allocate the necessary resources to meet the transfer requirement. MAS is accessible anywhere in the world from desktops, servers or mobile devices. It also supports both Windows and Linux operating systems and the following programming languages among others: .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP and C++. MAS can be accessed as long as the language can access HTTP/HTTPS requests.
Object Storage is implemented in the Blob Storage. Objects can have the hot or the cold tier with the hot meaning frequently accessed while the cold means rarely accessed data. Blobs are put into a container which can have as much as 500TB as the limit of the account. Security authentication uses the shared key model and the shared key signature for controlled access of other users. 18
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17 Barb Darrow, 2015. "IBM snaps up Cleversafe for cloud storage smarts". Fortune.
18 Tamra Myers, 2016. "Introduction to Microsoft Azure Storage". Microsoft Azure.
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is Google’s implementation of object storage which can manage both primary or frequently accessed data and infrequently accessed data. The objects are in placeholders called buckets which can be assigned into three storage classes with varying latency and price. There are the Standard, Durable Reduced Availability (DRA) and Nearline.
The Standard storage class has the highest in performance and availability and is most suitable for primary data with low latency. It is priced at 0.26 cents per GB per month. The DRA class has a higher latency and lower availability and is priced at 0.02 cents per GB per month. Nearline class objects have the highest latency and the lowest price at 0.01 cents making it more suitable for back-up and recovery. The estimate is that data is accessed no more than once a month.
Data can be accessed through a web browser or command line interface. Customers can also choose the geographical location of where their data will reside. GCS works seamlessly with Google App Engine. GCS is best suited for document management, project management and collaboration. 19
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19 Margaret Rouse, 2015. "Google Cloud Storage". TechTarget.
Comparison
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20 David Pallmann, 2016. "Azure Storage Explorer". CodePlex.
Section 3: Choice of Cloud Storage Solution
The recommendation is Google’s Cloud Storage (GCS). With its network of data centers and experience in systems’ operations, it has the speed that highlights the quality if its service. Google’s vast number of servers all over the world also contributes to speed as servers need not be too far away. It has 13 data centers all over the world with 900,000 servers 21. People won’t wait for hours before being serviced.
It has a web interface on the possibility to not having a device but there is a signal. It was able to find a web browser and command line. This would be less than the GUI interface and it worked. There is flexibility in having the most number of storage classes. It would be economical that data can be properly placed in the right class to minimize the costs of the service.
GCS is the simplest to use and the law firm does not need to have programming. All it needs is a fast access to stored data that can be accessed at anytime. GCS appears to be the ________________________
21 "Facts and Stats of World’s largest data centers", 2013. Storage Servers.
most suitable for documents, project management and coordination work as most of the content type and activities of the lawyers belong to these types of work.
The availability of a browser is all that is needed to use the service. The ease of use is the strongest case for GCS to be the best fit for the law firm as lawyers are not IT savvy and would rather focus on their legal work. All they need from IT are the basic benefits that will support them in their core competencies. In case there is a need for custom programming, GCS has its own set of useful applications through the Google App Engine.
GCS was also the least hit in terms of security breaches and it would appear to have the best security among the three. This criterion is very critical for the law firm as the confidentiality of its data is very high. Of the top 9 cloud security threats, data was the top concern 22.
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22 Charles Babcock, 2014. "9 Worst Cloud Security Threats". InformationWeek.
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