Avoiding Clouds The iTwin Way

While it may be a large part of my mandate here to highlight news about the cloud, I think it’s also important to be open to things that are NOT of the cloud. After all, cloud computing is viewed differently by many, and for some people the cloud’s encroachment on the computing landscape has left them reeling with insecurity about who has their data and how far they can trust them.

No matter how much vendors of cloud services tout their security strengths, everyone knows that ultimately nothing is really, totally secure. There are too many variables and once data is in the cloud those variables increase. A cloud vendor’s most trusted security whiz could snap someday and decide to get even with an uncaring boss by deleting data at random. When the data is on your own computer you know that if you leave it vulnerable to hackers then you are solely to blame when the unthinkable happens. But when you turn your data over to someone in the cloud – well, the reality is that you may never even know if your data is compromised and if it is, you might not know about it until it’s too late.

Cloud avoiders might be interested to hear about things going on in the tech marketplace designed to help them avoid going to the cloud while still staying relevant. One item is the iTwin. For reasons only the company probably knows, it named the device using the lowercase “i”  but it doesn’t work on Mac, yet (word from the press people is Mac versions may be out in June or July). So, I and others will have to wait to try it out, but it is available for the Windows world.

It’s a USB device billed as “two ends of a cable, without the cable.” So, one end is plugged into your main computer and the other plugs into any other computer creating instant sharing of files, from anywhere,  as long as both computers have Internet access. You can “access, copy, back up or remotely edit shared iTwin files between any two PCs.” Because no files are stored on the devices themselves, you are only limited by the storage available on the computers.