NETGEAR To End VueZone Services Next Year

[Razor512]

Cloud is most definitely here to stay...

Remember, with products and services - how the backend is done is completely abstracted from the architecture behind it.

@Razor512 - the cloud has little to do with a device that requires access to an upstream application service provider - this is not the cloud, this is a hosted (and perhaps managed) service that is tied to a bit of hardware/software inside your network,

I understand that, was just mainly focusing on the most negative aspect of it, most of the marketing material also refers to them as using the "Cloud", as that looks better to the consumer than.

I have nothing against cloud services, as there are many benefits to them, I just have a problem when products are designed so that it can be a point of failure, purely for planned obsolescence.

For example, the vuezone kill date was also paired with marketing info for Arlo wireless (battery powered) cameras. Different name, but really what is comes down to is them indirectly saying "Hey, you spent $300 on that camera system around 2 years ago, we want more money from you, so we are going to brick your old hardware so you will be more willing to buy new hardware. The new stuff is more expensive, but we have a coupon code just for you that will bring the price down to around how much you spent on your current system".

 

[RMerlin]

You raise some good points, Razor. But cloud is here to stay. Each of us must weigh the pros and cons when choosing products and make informed decisions.

And having a backup plan. Some services are easily replaced (file backup services for example), others can be problematic (like hardware tied to a cloud service) and will require advanced planning.

If tomorrow Google's datacenters were to melt down and take out my Google Apps services, I know I can quickly move my mail services to my website host, and get my mail service back online within the timespan it would take for my DNS changes to propagate.

Similar case with my Mediafire file distribution: I already have Sourceforge acting as a mirror.