The idea of taking your finished goods, project files, or other files you don't think you'll need ready, and sending them to the ‘cloud’ has gained tremendous steam over the past several years. Historically, the archive environment blended itself very well to maintaining databases, dealing with hierarchies and storage, especially as discs with more space became commercially available.

Unfortunately, the archive has always had some big problems:

-People need to buy new technology to replace legacy technology, not only creating an upfront cost but causing learning curves.

-The archive creates significant capital expense.

-Large archives inevitably create red tape, which there is significant marketplace pressure to avoid.

The historical kneejerk reaction is to simply buy more discs, but this leads to the archive’s biggest weakness: Disc space grows exponentially because archive data never goes away. Disk storage is more expensive than other media types (i.e.: tape), increasingly difficult to manage, and put you at risk even with an effective disaster recovery plan. Having this massive trove of data somehow backed up or stored in a secure facility isn’t a great answer because you lose easy access.

NAPC believes that the real future is a shift to a cloud storage module with it naturally and conveniently trackable by Xinet, leading to the whole concept Amazon is propagating with its array of cloud storage services.

Approaching cloud resources as part of a hierarchical storage management (HSM) environment will provide highly-leveraged benefits. You’ll be able to define business rules based on how much you archive, how frequently you archive, and how much time from the date you archive to the date you upload. You can put rules in place to automatically manage this information and keep the vast preponderance of your data in the least expensive location. When you need to simultaneously convert a large amount of data, you’ll be able to tap Amazon’s ability to transfer as much as 16 terabytes at once from the discs. Everything will be meticulously maintained by Xinet’s database.

If you can accept a four-hour wait to get your data back, Amazon’s Glacier service is extraordinary cheap (just 1-cent/Gb/month). Keep in mind you could easily spend more than 4-hours sifting through massive, unorganized archives and NEVER find what you need. Cloud storage, including Amazon, is represented by cheap pricing with wonderful enhancements of everything being online.

Amazon promises reliability and access, and some people have raised concerns over Amazon’s reliability, but really: Amazon is one of the most successful web companies ever. If you aren’t going to trust your web storage with them, who can you trust?

At NAPC we’ve embarked on a project working with our own Sean Kenny. Sean builds a very comprehensive step that we expect will take everyone into account who uses any integrator, Xinet or otherwise, BrandControl, took into account things like first period of time that someone archives from live to a final resting place, is your highest possibility of needing it back, incorporated the ability to initially put the archive data into the much more live on demand Amazon S3.

Offline information will show up as offline. Everything shows up as the same environment from a user’s perspective to search and browse, to determine for certain it’s what you want, and to automatically request a restore. You avoid additional infrastructure and IT costs and you eliminate the need for creating secondary copies of all your backup discs and storing them in a secure facility.

At the end of the day, here’s what cloud storage nets you for a very modest price: Support, software configuration, a storage fee, and making the cloud a natural extension of the business environment. Perhaps most importantly, your business looks like real thought leaders to potential leads. Who doesn’t like spending less money for even better results?

This is an update to one of our most popular blog posts:

Adobe is embracing the cloud with a streamlined service that issues a monthly charge for its apps. Lots of people aren’t happy, and the other day our COO stepped in to detail his skepticism. 

It’s not all bad news. In fact, some of us love clouds.

There will never be an ideal time to take the Adobe apps to the cloud, and there is always going to be a very uncomfortable transitionary period. Now is as good a time as any, especially when Creative Cloud is hosted on Amazon Web Services. The immediate benefits to the developers at Adobe and their ability to push updates faster is the real sell.

A common complaint is that people don’t want to have a persistent online connection to use Photoshop. You need to be online when you install and license your software, and annual membership users will need to validate every 30 days. Users will still be able to use products for 99 days even if you’re offline. This has proven true, we havent heard any complaints about 'not being able to work without being connected'

When it comes to coordinating with a group or team, files created by the Creative Cloud apps can be shared like any other file. For example, you can share files through Email, FTP, and so on. You have 20 gigs of storage space that you can use to sync files between your devices and access them whenever you want.

Creative Cloud doesn’t wall you off from other users who aren’t members of Creative Cloud either. You can let non-member view the files in a browser. Viewers can view relevant metadata, turn layers on and off and even download files for editing, all without knowing what Adobe Creative Cloud is.

People have been concerned with retaining ownership over what they create through the Creative Cloud, but as the myths article explains, Adobe claims no ownership or copyright over any of your work. It’s all yours.

The biggest issue we've seen is what our biggest fear was- the latency and delay in opening, saving, and working from the cloud is crushing production. Internet pipes are still too costly for anything similar to the experience creatives and studio folks are used to with local high performance file servers. Once the dream of CFOs and financial planners, pushing these assets into the cloud is driving up labor costs due to the sheer inefficiency of trying to access enormous files across the WAN.

At this point, it's clear the CC suite of applications has been a great success for Adobe, and usefull to the end users. Production though, is still being kept local due to access speeds and times

Adobe is forcing everyone into the cloud. I'm torn, for several reasons.

It's all good for Adobe. It’s a nice, regular, ka-ching. Smoothed revenue generation. As soon as you license, the clock starts. You have to act quickly to get the lower upgrade price. It's still pretty ham-handed, and the replies are not too favorable to Adobe. They’ve been catching heat on Facebook and Twitter too.

The $20 per month for an upgrade from CS6 seems like a good deal. Like the first free sample from your corner purveyor of joy. But no information of what happens once they have you. How much are you interested in trusting them?

Secondly, the feature set across the board is pretty mature. I haven't been overwhelmed by the last two releases. Some "nice to have" stuff, but nothing that's a slap my forehead, how could I have lived without that. A lot of our customers don't upgrade quickly, but wait for things to settle down in a dot release. Many skip a version. That's no longer a money saver.

You could wind up paying for new features you're not ready for. Is there a graceful way to downgrade if things blow up? Or revert?

Lastly, it depends on how well the licensing is executed. Putting production at risk is never a good idea.

Just try explaining to your client you blew the deadline because Adobe had an issue with your license.

I'm quite curious as to others’ reactions. How do <you feel?