Relying on Clouds You Don’t Own Is Risky

what was true for farming is true for digital things too

Time for me to review (or make a plan for) what happens when cloud based stuff vanishes. Local backups and options can be important. While this applies to music, movies and TV too, I’ll focus on software here.

Without warning, a major maker of software used by many in creative industries changed a product to remove many features, as well as ended the ability to work on one project with both the mobile and desktop versions.

They have made it clear no hosted product or service from them can be relied on going forward.

Nothing wrong with a software company pivoting to being more like an advanced but unreliable sports car than a core software offering. But it does change the role they can have in creative industries going forward. And it’s deeply not ideal they did this without warning.

It’s made me remember that “business continuity” is not just a boring business phrase or budget item.

Gonna have to go re-read my own 1880 compliance article now.

Removing multiple features, ending compatibility between mobile and desktop versions: these are not simply changes that compare on an apples-to-apples basis to something like a UI change on Facebook. A rollback and the ending of functionality is, unavoidably and predictably, going to disrupt the core uses of any software that’s mission critical.

To imagine that [company name redacted] cloud offerings, all [company name redacted] software-as-a-service, can be part of any business’ continuity is clearly an error.

Does [company name redacted] offer things no one else does? Sure, but that doesn’t change that those offerings, obviously, may not persist past this moment.

Just one example: curved text was removed long enough from the product for people to have designs they were working on significantly delayed or frozen, and while curved text is back as I type this, it’s clear many many features may disappear at anytime and without warning.

The update has some speed improvements, and I imagine the infrastructure behind it is more advanced. For an alpha release it is excellent, but typically an alpha release is never made public.

I know many many businesses that have been significantly disrupted with entire workflows now impossible, and the online support group for the product is in recent weeks full of posts by some of these frustrated businesses.

Whatever the reasons [company name redacted] has for the changes and making them with essentially no warning, it has made crystal clear this: no [company name redacted] hosted product or service can be relied on going forward.

So it now behooves all of us to either switch to the fail-over options our business continuity plans already had, or to scramble to make our plans to be able to replace any and all [company name redacted] hosted things we have previously relied on. Without warning our hosted work and access to the [company name redacted] products may end at any time.

There is some truth to the joke: the cloud is just someone else’s computer.

© Copyright October 7, 2023, David August, all rights reserved davidaugust.com

David August is an award-winning actor, acting coach, writer, director, and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run, it’s now out on Amazon (affiliate link). He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. His artwork has been used and featured by multiple writers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners, and others to express visually. Off-screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies, and major studios, helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the Internet.