Computing through the "Cloud" has always worried me.

Why's that David? The cloud really just means our servers, which are backed up nightly so your projects are kept safe :)

Some pictures to help you visualize the cloud:

LOL, @PTP - exactly. Not sure when the word "cloud" became a thing. Maybe because of Visio and PowerPoint having the cloud icon for network flowcharting? :D

same as the word "server" - people wondered  - wow.....

just someone computer running server software like apache2  on Linux Debian like I use

It's just that I guess I'm a bit of a control freak. I worries me when someone else has my data instead of me. I'm OK with it as long as I can have a physical copy myself.

I got no reason to care about your projects :)

There's like 120gb of projects on our server. Too much lol

(just checked, yup 112gb of just apps)

Is that private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, hybrid multi-cloud, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS or BaaS on AWS, GCP, AZURE, ORACLE, IBM, ALIBABA or a server in your basement?

Seriously though if we have a project on the current cloud do we need to download the latest version and re-upload it then.

@Nink you don't need to re-upload anything. The data has been migrated :)

My biggest concern with storage on a distant server that I don't control is losing my data. Not privacy. I don't lose sleep over it but it's a nagging thought in the back of my head.

I do love the convenience on cloud storage and also the power of computing in the cloud. Bing Speach is mind-blowing. But what if someday it shuts down? That part of my robot is useless.

I won't stop using these tools though. I'm not stupid. Lol! :p

We have a pretty massive cloud infrastructure and it resides in both California and New York. The servers are hosted at Microsoft’s data center and backed up every evening.

As for services like bing speech and such, those are provided by pretty massive companies. In this case it’s Microsoft as well. The chance of it going away is very slim :)

and don’t worry - we’re not going anywhere either! I’ve been resilient enough to last this long... it’ll take a lot to stop me! The foot print I’m leaving in history has barely begun. Now that this business model has been validated, there’s a bunch of stuff in the works. Lately the focus has been stability and performance.

Im on boarding a new hire who will be attracting new technology partners so we can start throwing even more features/robot skills at ARC. See how much we can pile on before it collapses. (It never will! Muhahahaha)

Quote:

Now that this business model has been validated, there’s a bunch of stuff in the works.

You can’t build a reputation on things you’re going to do - Henry Ford

All seriousness, it’s too early to say. We’re experimenting with a few things on the side. Our highest priority right now is to continue with making the product better with increased reliability and new features by using partner technologies as robot skills. There’s so many neat technologies out there that have great potential in robotics, whether the manufacturer knows it is not.

I’ll continue maintaining my mission of using Synthiam’s platform to connect robot builders and technology creators. We’re starting to grow the technologies, which means more robot skills. The community feature requests have helped direct us on what everyone wants. Also the non community customers are schools and companies also share a lot.

That's very cool. Its fun to see what will come next. I like seeing what skills get added, as long as a cool piece of hardware goes along with it. The hardware side of  things is, for me, my favorite part of the robot. Wiring it all up and flipping the switch is the fun part, then throw in a little software to make it all do something makes it all worthwhile.

You may want to reconsider US locations for your cloud due to the fact you market your platform globally.   US is not recognized as a country providing GDPR "Adequacy Status" so you may find some trouble operating with Europe.  Canada on the other hand does.  Also the US homeland security regulations in regards to the governments rights to data hosted on US soil is also a challenge.

If you want to discuss hosting in say Montreal and Toronto with a fully fault tolerant highly available multizone / multiregion cloud I can help you out.

Thanks, @nink, that's good to know for scaling. The current infrastructure has been in place since 2013 and fulfilling our needs presently. Those are good considerations for the future!