I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all
Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now"
Until recently, many cloud users felt like Joni Mitchell in her
classic song, "Both Sides Now." No matter how you looked
at clouds, you never really understood them, how they worked, or
what happened inside them. Cloud storage and data processing were
often (and with some justification) viewed as something of a
digital Wild West, with few rules or standards for data protection,
not much transparency and lots of risk for the unwary cloud user.
Even so, many businesses were willing to endure some of these risks
in order to secure the multifarious benefits offered by cloud data
storage and processing. However, that view of cloud services
in changing, and a new ISO standard is going to advance that
change.
