A cloud evaporates
October 13th, 2009 | by elisabeth | Published in Future of the Internet | 8 Comments
There are many reasons to worry about cloud computing. Data stored in the cloud can be difficult to extract for you, yet all too easy to demand by government. Applications running the cloud can mean new gatekeepers between you and code you might want to run. (And in discussing these issues, people don’t even agree on what the cloud means). Yet among Prof. Zittrain’s concerns on cloud computing is rarely the fundamental worry that a vendor will simply lose the data — one assumes that a major vendor can get that part right. Then this:
Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:
T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.
We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.
If you store your data in the cloud, your provider might accidentally lose it all, permanently. This appears to be what’s happened to people who organized their lives on their T-Mobile Sidekick phones.
Now, clearly, many more people have lost data by failing to back up their personal PCs than have lost it because of the failure of big cloud-computing vendors. Indeed, one of the selling points of cloud computing is that it keeps your data safe from unexpected computer crashes. The difference, though, is that diligent users can back up their PCs and avert data-loss catastrophe—which is not always true, or not always straightforward, with data stored on some vendor’s servers. (It’s kind of like the difference between cars vs planes. Planes are safer, but you can only personally improve your safety in a car.)
This is another good argument for data portability. If T-Mobile had made it easy to create local backups (as far as I can tell, they didn’t), they could be sharing the blame with their customers right now.
—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer
October 13th, 2009 at 1:03 pm (#)
It is simply about Reputational risk. Reputational risk (damage to an organization through loss of its reputation or standing), can arise as a consequence of operational failures. Every company understands reputational risk, particularly businesses who regard their brand as one of their most critical assets. Google is one of them. They have a reputation to maintain. But I suppose Microsoft Danger didn’t care….
October 14th, 2009 at 1:10 am (#)
While I always appreciate a watchful eye on potential threats to our personal liberty, I continue to maintain cloud architectures are far more liberating than they are threatening. The best analogy I can come up with is to the car industry. Once upon a time, it was the coolest of cool to know how to slide under your car and rebuild your engine. I still think that’s pretty cool. Over the years, though, it became clear that car companies were much better at building cars than we were. Toyota has the resources and expertise to build a Prius, and to get under the hood and fix the battery charging system on one of those babies is an impossibility. While understanding it and knowing how to do it yourself is great, the world’s quite clearly a better place due to higher tech cars that are simply beyond the reach of backyard hobbyists.
The same is true of computers themselves – fewer and fewer people build their own computers from scratch these days. It’s simply become too complicated.
The same is true of the cloud, and for anyone who has ever used the various cloud services (I’ve been using Google App Engine and Amazon EC2, S3 etc for years now), their power is astonishing. The amount of time they save is simply mindblowing, especially for small companies like mine that need to watch every dime and every hour.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:13 am (#)
Oh, I should also point out the two largest cloud providers, Google and Amazon, make it extremely easy to take your data off. I know the Google guys and have met Werner Vogels. Their goals are not as different from yours as you might think – I’d even argue they have the same goals but are executing them with more powerful tools. No offense =).
October 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm (#)
@Adam Fisk,
This article is not a challenge to the “cloud architecture” you espouse. The article refers to a self described “data services provider” that lost all of its customers’ data.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:57 am (#)
This shows that Nicolas Carr’s “Big Switch” idea, equating cloud providers with electricity providers, doesn’t really fit. Electricity is a commodity, an indifferentiable product. It doesn’t matter who supplies it to you. Your company or personal data are not a commodity, they are irreplacable for you. Trusting them in the hands of one cloud provider exposes you to a Black Swan type of risk: rare but very costly when it occurs. You cannot switch to another provider to recuperate your original data. Oliver Williamson, last week’s Nobel Prize in economics, explains why this “asset specificity” entails high risks that require a serious long-term contractual relationship.
October 19th, 2009 at 12:38 pm (#)
[...] cloud kan ook uit elkaar ploffen, waarschuwt Jonathan Zittrain op zijn site. Misschien toch maar een backup maken op je oude vertrouwde computer. [...]
October 29th, 2009 at 10:44 am (#)
[...] access them from a simple net box (Hmmm – I remember using “dumb terminals” back in 1983!). Elizabeth Oppenheimer points out that “There are many reasons to worry about cloud computing. Data stored in the [...]
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am (#)
[...] the internet, but the recent past. Many of the recent lame moments have been covered in this blog (Danger Sidekick phones lose users’ data for weeks; Apple rejects Google Voice; Amazon removes 1984 from the Kindle). The old stuff is fun. I [...]