In Defense of the Cloud

The cloud has taken a PR beating recently. Two systems seemingly too big to fail did: CloudFlare and AWS S3. The former was a security issue that caused sensitive data to show up in search results, the latter brought nearly the entire Internet down for the better part of a day on February 28, 2017.

**Who Do You Trust?**AWS S3 has been the standard in static file storage for years and many websites and apps are dependent on it for JavaScript, CSS, images and other files. The trust has been placed in Amazon to replicate the files across availability zones for faster and more dependable delivery (ironically). CloudFlare, a product that offers higher performance and security for your applications, leaked sensitive user data which required days of “scrubbing”.

CloudFlare Employees

The failure of these seemingly unbreakable services has created uneasiness with software engineers, business owners and consumers (can a brother get an internet cat meme?). The big question is: “Is the cloud still dependable?”

**Cloud and Proud**Despite these recent failures, if you are a developer in the cloud space you know the answer to the question “can the cloud be trusted?”. It is an emphatic “hell yes!”. Here are a few reasons why the cloud is still the best way to deliver your online goods:

1. 
   

   The 3 S’s: Support, Security and Scalability:The alternative is maintaining your own system which is a huge challenge and requires heaps of infrastructure and ongoing maintenance.

2. 
   

   **Faster development cycles**Time is money in the software world. By using cloud products, you are effectively agreeing to not reinvent the wheel with every new product produced.

3. 
   

   **Specialized Service**You don’t have time to build the best file provider, database or CMS. These service providers give you the best way to build a modular, microservice-style architecture.

If you are a developer in the cloud space you know the answer to the question “can the cloud be trusted?”. It is an emphatic “hell yes!”

**A Closing Analogy**I like to think of the cloud as a self-driving car. A manually-driven car requires maintenance, service, serious attention while driving, etc. but driving is not that important to me and I would much rather entrust a self-driving car to get me where I need to go safely.

Step into the cloud

I believe that in the near future, I’ll be explaining to my children how people used to drive and maintain their own cars and they will look at me like I’m a crazy old man. Much like we remember in disbelief that not too long ago seatbelts were optional and you could smoke in public restaurants.

Sure, cloud systems can wreak widespread havoc every once in a long while, but failure is more likely to happen at your own hands. For me, I’m more than happy to let the cloud take the wheel.

Tony Spiro is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cosmic JS, an API-first Content Management Platform for building content-powered apps.