A Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Imagine how you'd feel if your web browser suddenly disappeared for 24 hours, or worse still, if you simply received an email from its developers saying, "Sorry, mate. No more browser, and by the way, all your bookmarks are gone too."

You'd be outraged, right? Now imagine that instead of it being your browser, its an entire office suite that disappears along with all your documents. Everything. Your fundamental ability to continue your business is affected. It's a good job software doesn't work like that, isn't it? The trouble is, it's beginning to do so in a very big, very frightening way, and I don't understand why.

Cloud computing is, "Worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," GNU founder and open source guru Richard Stallman told The Guardian recently. He may be a controversial figure, but I can't shake the feeling that he's right. You see, instead of keeping your infrastructure on your own server behind your own firewall, cloud computing involves handing everything to a vaguely-understood third party, accessing it using a web-based service, and trusting that everything will remain both safe and available.

According to the Cloud Computing Incidents Database (CCID) Wiki, such services have already experienced 12 major incidents this year. But here's the kicker: One service has actually closed down, taking a lot of people's data with it. The Linkup ceased trading on 8th August after what began as a simple data transfer from a legacy system. After losing an incredible 45% of data in the process, it seems to have simply shut up shop. Nice one, lads. Way to increase confidence in what Larry Ellison of Oracle has described as "complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"

The steady stream of cloud computing service outages is gathering pace. The CCID Wiki shows just 2 incidents for 2007. At the time of writing, however, it shows that 10 of the 12 incidents recorded so far for 2008 occurred in the latter half of the year. Would you gamble on it sticking at 10 until New Year's Eve, with a drop in 2009?

Stallman's advice is to, "Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program," but it's not always easy to afford hardware when you're in a hurry to get a start-up off the ground and make your first million cheaply.

The evidence so far is that when you buy into cloud computing, you also buy exposure to any potential data storage, network and business continuity problems your service provider may have. Maybe the only way to limit that exposure is to use cloud computing (if you must) only for non-essential tasks. Like all things in life, you get what you pay for.

This is a story that is sure to run like a toddler's nose, but if I ever set up a company, I'll be paying for my own hardware, thank you very much.