The Cloud is Dumb and it Needs to Get Dumber

25 years ago author and futurist George Gilder described the need for a dumb network:

In a world of dumb terminals and telephones, networks had to be smart. But in a world of smart terminals, networks have to be dumb.

The Internet — a connective web of pings and pipes pining for smart devices to connect to it — became that dumb network (dumb here means simple and reliable). Perhaps a better description is blindly obedient.

Today, businesses are porting more services to the cloud — and the cloud needs to get dumber. Whether sending email blasts, triggering SMS notifications, broadcasting video chats, or processing machine learning algorithms to verify an identify — the cloud needs to treat these transactions in a seamless, effortless, obedient fashion.

The evolution of business communications needs to shift and shift fast to adapt to the fast-moving demands of business, IT security and consumer transactions.

Consider what could go down in history as the biggest mistake in politics. In March 2016, John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for President, received an email claiming that someone was trying to access his campaign Gmail account from the Ukraine.

6 hours later:

Clinton campaign IT manager: “John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account.”

By that time it was too late. Embarrassing emails surfaced creating a 11th-hour news frenzy which may have impacted the election.

Mistakes like these can kill a campaign. Mistakes like the recent breach at Equifax can kill a business. Adoption of cloud-based policies ensuring uniform security is a core tenant of any business backend now.

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