T-Mobile and Microsoft's Danger subsidiary recently apologized to Sidekick customers for losing their data. According to an Oct. 10th announcement, a recent outage on Microsoft/Danger systems caused loss of "contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, or photos" that are no longer on Sidekick devices.
The likelihood of a successful recovery was put at "extremely low." This is yet another illustration of risks inherent in cloud services.
If you are a provider of cloud services, it's paramount that you assess the end-to-end redundancy. Are SANs backed up? Are your data centers drawing from multiple power grids?
If you are considering cloud services, take heed. Ask your cloud services vendor to demonstrate how its systems are redundant. Ensure service-level agreements (SLAs) are signed with monetary penalties for unattained SLAs. And make sure your cloud vendors will be around when you need them.
... David Sengupta and Bob Spurzem