If you’re reading this, take a moment to back up your data devices. It’s also taught me to remind people to back up your information. I am not so sure a nameless cloud will be any better. Apple has killed services, Sprint, Yahoo and others have all killed off Web site services which means information or identities tied to those Web sites becomes useless. This experience has taught me that you cannot rely on big corporations. There was simply no way to retrieve the data and nobody at Sprint or Virgin was of any use. Once the Web site went dark, there was no way to retrieve the contact information unless you retyped all of the information yourself.Ī few friends went through this fiasco and I did my best to attempt to sync the phone to anything using any process. The only way to remove data from a Helio was through the Web site. They were released in early 2007 but customers were informed the service would be turned off on May 25, 2010. All of the people who bought a Sprint Helio loved the phones. The owner of the domain has since made a change in that practice.Īnother example was the Virgin/Sprint Helio fiasco. We couldn’t transfer the domain easily because the email contact for the admin was using the same domain name. This was naturally 20 days before the opening of the festival the Web site was promoting. It had corruption problems with the database and drives kept failing. The ISPs server went down and it took nearly a week to recover the server. I had a data crash a few years ago involving a client at a server farm. They’ll work it out I’m sure, but for now understand that we’re in the very early cloud years with lots of mischief yet to come.īob is right, the real issue with cloud computing is data loss. Steve loves to do that, but unfortunately it leads to problems as often as it does to brilliance. So Apple didn’t buy some Content Distribution Network or a little company with real expertise in this area - Steve just handed it to a couple very good engineers who - other than being very smart - had no background in the subject. This leads us to Apple’s peculiar failing in the cloud space, which is that Steve Jobs wants to own it in his own way. Their new system isn’t respecting DNS and Apple is too stupid or arrogant to realize it. Apple, for example, is taking back from Akamai control of iTunes distribution, which is fine except early reports say they aren’t doing a very good job. Once we’re storing everything in the cloud, what’s to keep us from losing everything in the cloud?Īnd in the short term we’re going to also see a lot of cloud screw-ups. Some cloud computing outfit is going to quickly and quietly shut down, taking with it the data (business, photos, video, memories, etc.) of tens of thousands of users.
There’s also the issue of what happens when some cloud service goes out of service permanently? These are startups, remember, and a good percentage of startups fail. Imagine what would happen if the cloud became a zombie. We haven’t seen a cloud virus or a cloud trojan - yet - but we will. Everything in IT fails eventually, though the big myth is that won’t happen with cloud computing.
That further means 2011 will be the year that cloud computing lets us down. If 2010 was the year of cloud computing that means 2011 is the year we’ll actually start using it in earnest.