I recently saw the headline,”T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger data loss is bad for the cloud“, and, as an admin who works with cloud technology on a daily basis, viewed the headline with some concern. However, after reading the article itself, my only thought is “What does this have to do with the cloud?”. Reading through, we find that Microsoft/Danger stores your phone data (contacts, photos, etc) on it’s servers, and that the phone needs to constantly be in contact with the servers in order to maintain service and data. Unfortunately, the servers crashed, and all of the data was lost. Turn off your phone, lose all your data. Yet- this is exactly what the Sidekick service promises to protect you from- and it failed.
The problem with blaming this on the “cloud” is that, while technically, your cell phone and the Microsoft/Danger servers form a “cloud”, the failure lies with the servers, and those who administer those servers. It doesn’t matter whether those servers are virtual, or physical- if there is not a disaster recovery plan in place, and if that disaster recovery plan has not been tested- data will be lost. Your data. This is not a shortcoming of cloud computing- it is a result of depending on others to maintain your data. It also gives us caution when depending on external providers over the network to always be available. Services stop. Power fails. Disks die. Routing interruptions happen.
This is just network computing. But if the people (or companies) behind it all don’t do their own due diligence- disasters like the this, and worse will continue to happen.