Cloud-Based Appraisal Computing

The panacea that cloud-bases computing is supposed to be just doesn't exist in reality.  Yes it's great for the big software providers like Microsoft and large-scale data accumulators to offer their shared services on a per person monthly fee basis to the masses.  There is much less that has to be done to update a common community of users, and you don't have to worry about piracy, program conflicts or individuals working on old legacy operating systems, but if you lived through the old days of mainframe computer dominance you understand that there are many downsides to this computing structure.

Most important is the loss of independent control over your own work environment.  Today Microsoft Outlook went down on my wife's cloud-based machine, she works for a large company with thousands of employees who work on computers, and no one got anything done for over 3 hours.  That's the old mainframe and the new cloud-based computing commonality, literally thousands of working people losing countless man-hours of their lives because of one computer or networking glitch. 

If the future of computing is moving back to a mainframe-like dependency on cloud-based computers I'm glad that I won't have to be part of it.  Age has its privileges.  To all of you who must live through that transition I wish you well, but I don't doubt for a second that eventually there will again be an independent computer versus cloud-based computing war and that stand-alone computers will again prove to be the superior model.   

Remote, non-human updating of programs and databases makes a lot of sense if done right, like spider programs collecting internet data from a site without human interaction it's a job better handled by programs online.  Core computing however should absolutely not be done remotely.  I understand that computer companies want there to be no reasonable alternative, but just like the promises of data processing department managers that there will be little downtime the reality is that as long as humans control cloud-based computing there will be outages.

Has anyone even considered the fact that a significant service loss on a cloud-based computing platform would effectively put them out of business?  When you make the transition to one or more cloud-based applications you are effectively putting the success of your business in the hands of a third-party.     

Call me old-fashioned, but it’s my opinion that you never give away your ability to complete your reports the hard way.  I don’t know that you need to be able to type up reports on that old Royal typewriter or IBM electric, but if you are going to go the cloud-based route having a stand-alone computer with a working word processor, spreadsheet and forms program on it is a good idea.

For more appraisal information contact Glenn J. Rigdon MA, MRICS, ASA is a Las Vegas / Henderson Nevada based appraiser who can be contacted via email or via his business website known as Appraiser Las Vegas  (http://www.appraiserlasvegas.com), or you can also click on “Contact Us” on the home page of this website or visit my public profile at LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/glenn-rigdon-ma-mrics-asa/1a/30b/879/

Article source: http://www.appraisalarticles.com/Technology-for-Appraisers/4573-Cloud-Based-Appraisal-Computing.html