Cloud computing fail

Cloud Computing, since its inception, has been touted as a safe, reliable way for end-users to manage their data. In the cloud computing realm, all end-user data is stored over the Internet. This concept frees end-users from worrying about data management issues such as data loss. Or so it seems.

A recent server failure at data center may have thrown a monkey wrench into the cloud computing conceptual machinery. A few weeks ago, T-Mobile announced that users of Sidekick phones may have lost part or all of their data becasue of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. Due to the Sidekick platform's high reliance on the cloud, the devices were essentially crippled by the server failure. Although Microsoft later announced that it could recover most of the data, some Sidekick users did report complete data loss.

Aside from angry Sidekick users and talk of some class action law suits, the T-Mobile incident has sparked a lot of discussion about cloud computing – mostly negative. As well, other issues which are now being raised in the discussion concerning cloud computing are security and privacy.

Before the T-Mobile incident, cloud computing companies had been heavily pushing services like client data backups to consumers and businesses. For instance, radio ads with voice talent from famous personalities could be regularly heard on popular radio talk shows such as Coast to Coast AM. These ads made cloud based data backups to seem as the completely safe, secure wave of the data management future. They also inferred that it was idiotic and risky if end-user data was not backed up in the idyllic cloud. The T-Mobile incident, however, hammered home the fact that data loss could indeed occur at a cloud computing data center. Additionally, the idyllic sense of infallibility surrounding cloud computing data centers was now shattered.

While some have been questioning the safety of the data at cloud computing data centers, others have brought up the issue of security. It is a common place occurrence to hear news reports of business data systems being compromised by hackers. In some cases the companies involved were lax in terms of security, in others whey were not. With the across the board gamut of businesses being hacked, it is generally a given that a major security breach will also occur at a cloud computing data center in the future.

Although cloud computing companies are supposedly constrained by privacy regulations when it comes to end-user data, there may be scenarios where end-user data is sold as a commodity. One such scenario is where a cloud computing company sanitizes end-user data by removing personal information and then sells it to a survey company. Which, as recently reported by Wired.com, this scenario is actually occurring at cloud computing companies who manage medical data. Whether or not cloud computing companies are truly breaking privacy laws by selling data will likely come down to a court decision. For now end-users are left to figure out what the true meaning of privacy is when it comes to their data.

In any case, the T-Mobile incident is now a defining and negative moment in the early history of cloud computing. It is also a moment that will live on in infamy in the world of computing as a whole.