At some level, everybody is right on the issue but there is a natural tendency to stray from the fundamentals. Will anybody argue that network latency is not a challenge? Will anybody argue that packet loss is not a problem? Our experience (and yours, too, whether you make the connection or not) is that the negative effects of packet loss are actually growing as real-time, cloud, and virtualized applications generate increasing demand for good network performance and quality. And our experience also shows that it is entirely possible to all but eliminate the packet loss that is endemic to best efforts networks while adding no latency of any consequence. This will prove a boon to some cloud apps.

This much seems obvious: We all want to be using best efforts networks before paying for the ‘fat pipes’ of dedicated bandwidth. In fact, we all need to be going over-the-top of the public Internet for many of our networked business applications. At IPeak Networks, we believe Aspera has the right idea and we applaud every effort to make the cloud make better business sense. IPeak Networks happens to be oriented on making the best use of the lowest cost and most readily available network services but there is certainly room for solutions at both ends of the economic spectrum.

What Aspera is doing is to present a point of view, which you have full right to refute. All they are saying is their President will talk about this position at an upcoming conference.

At any rate, would you agree that data is being produced many times faster than the network speeds? And as this data being generated is increasing, it needs to be analyzed for which it need to be stored so interesting queries can be run on it.

In expressing you disapproval, you have gone from economics of cloud storage, economics of cloud itself, then UI (??)…. could it be possible that this pain point is broad enough that Aspera may be addressing it and solving at least one aspect of the cloud storage economics – getting the data in a fast and reliable manner.

Let me put it this way: if you showed this article to an engineer at a company who takes data transfer and bandwidth seriously (say Google), you’d get laughed out of the room for even presenting this laughably bad “solution.”

Here’s why this article is pure snakeoil: it doesn’t provide you with any useful information about *how* to approaches the problem. It simply states that its “solution” will solve your problems and make your life better. Like I said before, it’s the value proposition. Not only is this approach willfully dishonest, it’s completely unethical. If you want to make good decisions, get the facts, and judge their value on your own. Don’t rely on some salesperson hiding in writer’s clothes to make the value judgement for you. That’s just plain stupidity.

The fact is that cloud storage provides absolutely no real cost savings anywhere. Why? Because the minuscule savings you achieve in bandwidth performance is fizzled away by the cloud service costs, not to mention the cost increases in IT deployment and maintenance procedures.

Never mind that the actual usability of cloud storage is very poorly thought through, no matter who you use for a provider.

Have you ever personally used a cloud solution to transfer data? What’s the first headache you run into? Oh look, you have to use some lame web interface, or some poorly written Explorer add-in, or do a file-drop to some strange network location. All you’re doing is asking your users to trade-in the familiarity of FTP for a new complicated procedure that saves them absolutely nothing. If it’s a web interface, you still have to hit the browse button (there’s no drag & drop). If it’s an explorer add-in, it typically doesn’t replicate all of the explorer functionality users need, and it almost never plays nicely with other Explorer plug-ins. If it’s a drop location, prepare for endless help desk calls as users ask, “how do I know it went through? what’s happening? I don’t understand this?”

Also, in reference to 1996, I’m laughing at the fact that this article references latency as some sort of salient point. Seriously? You’re attacking the problem by arguing latency? That’s like me attacking the age of the Earth by citing flaws in carbon dating. It’s a straw man argument that you should be ashamed of.

This sales pitch for cloud storage is a joke. Anyone who tries to sell you on the cloud by only telling you how great your life will be after is a thief. Anyone who falls for it is incompetent.

There are few successful companies providing file transfer alternatives to technologies like FTP, and the cloud providers need to begin devising a way to integrate those replacements into the core of their offering. “Cloud storage” providers expecting someone to upload terabytes of data–using methods like FTP–is the part that’s dating back to 1996.

Whether on the cloud or not, enterprises need to look into the alternatives… yes, they cost money (sophisticated technology isn’t an accident), but they’re increasingly necessary with the volumes of data people handle these days.