Cloud Computing Hinges on Trust

With the caveat that most things in life depend to a very large extent on trust, a recent attack on a Vodafone data center and Google's inadvertent erasure of some user emails raise the recurring question all cloud application providers will face: "can we trust you?"

In the case of Vodafone service, the first issue was simply continuity of service, but also some issues about privacy and security since it was not immediately obvious what equipment was stolen from the data center. In Google's case, the issue primarily was destruction of user data.

Those issues will remain as more applications move into a "cloud" environment. Not that trust is an unusual requirement for daily life. We all assume that the paper currency in our wallets will be accepted, without question, as a medium of exchange. But the whole ecosystem hinges fundamentally on trust. You assume the milk you buy at your grocery store is in fact, milk, and is, in fact, safe to drink. But there are trust levels embedded at every stage of the ecosystem that delivers you milk.

Trust is not an unusual or rare requirement for any functioning ecosystem. Trust is, in fact, foundational for any ecosystem that links buyers and sellers, users and creators, of any sort.

BBC - dot.Rory: Vodafone and Google: A question of trust