Bandwidth limitations are throttling cloud - and the economy, argues Peter Cochrane

Cloud computing will require ubiquitous, reliable network connections. So where are they, asks Peter Cochrane

You can't be a tech consultant, guru or leader by using a pen and paper. You have to be at - and be seen to be at - the leading edge.

So all my general equipment is less than 18-24 months old, and I continually check out new hardware and apps to judiciously select those that add value to my life and work. Those that do not are rapidly donated to a worthy cause, or dispatched to the waste basket by deletion.

It's no surprise then, that I was "in the cloud" way before we had any commercial cloud offerings, and today I have four commercial accounts, plus a couple of self-built facilities.

All of this is to ensure that a single or, indeed, multiple service failure by a host does not see a huge amount of my data lost, my company badly damaged or wiped out, and/or clients taking a hit. This multi-service/server approach also gives added security by magnifying the storage option degrees of freedom through decimation and distribution.

So, you might think I'd be one happy bunny, but I am certainly not on two key points: First, the lack of infrastructure proving symmetric broadband is a killer - no bandwidth no cloud; Second, none of the clouds do what I want or make life easy!

In an ideal cloud world I would be able to have all my files moving up and down at will from any fixed or mobile location, to and from any of my devices. I now travel with a laptop, tablet and mobile phone, and keeping it all in sync is not 100% automated. Emails, diaries and notes are easy to organise.

Even small documents up to 20 or so megabytes are okay(ish), but my presentations, animations, movies, models and engineering documents now span multiple gigabytes of storage. Try moving these around on an ADSL connection at 30Mbps down and just 8Mbps or, indeed, using the elusive 3G and 4G networks in the UK. They just don't work!

And, of course, I also have a lot of online and cloud-based apps for simulation and analysis, plus AI. So I can only work in the cloud from a very few selected locations in the EU and US.

In parallel, road-traffic delays in the UK currently cost anywhere from around £5bn annually. For IT, the cost of a lack of connectivity and bandwidth is hard to estimate, but it certainly contributes to an increase in road traffic, while limiting the amount of business that can be completed. By some calculations, congestion will cost the UK as much as £300bn by 2030.

There now comes another major problem.

At the two extremes we have: 'Passive' - do what you want, but we won't help you clouds. Then there is 'Apple', who want you to work the way they want you to work using their devices the way they want you too use their devices.

But I need to be able to upload complete file systems, including folder structures and all relational links and data - to work my way.

At best I have been able to automate all the simple stuff, but at the other end I am manually engaged in overnight batch-loading, one folder at a time.

This is all too time consuming and really only constitutes a series of back-up drives in the sky. The reality is that we are a long way from cloud computing as originally conceived. Our intuition and intention were right and proper, but we have been confounded by backward-looking infrastructure providers, too slow to provide what we need.

The result? Poor broadband - and no cloud industry and services as ubiquitous as they should be.

Peter Cochrane OBE is an ex-CTO of BT who now works as a consultant focusing on solving problems and improving the world through the application of technology.

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