Microsoft's Sidekick debacle brings much-hyped 'cloud' back to Earth

Credit: ZeroOne/ Flickr.

Over the last year, the technology sector has become enamored with the possibilities of the "cloud."

That's the computing paradigm that allows consumers to forget about storing their software and data on local hard drives -- where it can be vulnerable to electrical surges and soft-drink spillage -- and let  companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft worry about keeping it safe.

But last week, a hole was poked in the cloud's massive hype bubble. Microsoft Corp. and T-Mobile Inc., the respective maker and carrier of the Sidekick mobile device, acknowledged a "service disruption" that cut off most users of the device from large amounts of personal data -- contacts, calendars, personal notes and more -- that were stored in Microsoft's cloud.

Initially pessimistic about their data recovery efforts, the companies on Monday released a more sanguine forecast, saying that "the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible." (For close readers, note the number of conditional nouns and verbs in that sentence -- not very confidence-inspiring.) 

But the larger questions may be how this incident will affect attitudes about the dependability of cloud computing, or if it should affect them at all.

In places where the cloud is now on trial -- in Los Angeles City Hall, for one -- decision makers may have one more reason to be suspicious of its many promises. Google Inc., a major proponent of cloud software, is quick to offer a laundry list of advantages -- lower cost, ubiquitous access, no hassle.  But the company spends less time warning of its potential pitfalls.

Though absent in Google's promotional literature, those pitfalls are enumerated at length in the company's regulatory filings, where it must legally disclose risks and liabilities to its shareholders. In a letter last week to City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, John Simpson of advocacy group Consumer Watchdog noted the stark language Google uses to describe the many things that could go wrong with its cloud-based systems:

"Our systems are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, terrorist attacks, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, computer denial of service attacks, or other attempts to harm our systems. Some of our data centers are located in areas with a high risk of major earthquakes. Our data centers are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, and intentional acts of vandalism, and to potential disruptions if the operators of these facilities have financial difficulties. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and our disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of a natural disaster, a decision to close a facility we are using without adequate notice for financial reasons, or other unanticipated problems at our data centers could result in lengthy interruptions in our service.”

Of course, if a company is compelled to enumerate every possible risk to its bottom line, it may read like the above parade of nightmares -- when in reality each individual disaster may be exceedingly unlikely. So far, Google is not known for weak security. 

Still, with the Sidekick situation, Microsoft has proved that data disasters do -- and will -- happen.  (Notably, the Redmond, Wash., software maker is vying with Google for the Los Angeles computing contract).  What's less clear is how frequent this type of incident will occur and whether cloud users ought to be actively worried. As with plane crashes, disease outbreaks and shark attacks, a handful of sensational instances may not reflect the risk to the population at large. Moreover, some businesses can learn from errors and reduce the likelihood of a repeat occurrence.

People are willing to tolerate a certain amount of risk -- otherwise they wouldn't be flying, driving, eating spinach or surfing in Malibu. 

But the cloud is new and fragile, kept levitating largely by the trust of its users. To date, serious problems have been relatively rare. But if consumers begin to believe their data is not safe in the hands of certain companies, they'll just pull it out -- and poof!

-- David Sarno

Comments

[raymond torres]

I think this article is true because i have been hearing about this topic latley and now that i read it i belive it

[JS]

Even when there are no pitfalls, you are in the loosing end with letting other people keep your data. I suffered that with my bank and I will not go 'cloud' again. A few years ago I opted to go paperless for my checking and savings accounts. I thought the bank would be the best place to start. To my surprise, one day I needed to get statements on an account I had closed and they were no longer available. I had to pay $10 per statement, plus wait 30 days to get them. I would say to all: do not go cloud with you bills and bank statements UNLESS they promised to you in writing that you will have access for 10 years for free, even if you close the account; and you be willing to download your statements and bills every month. Furthermore, the printed bills have legal requirements to disclose that online bills do not seem to have. All in all, I will never go cloud again.

[digitalgypsies]

and Larry Ellison is cracking up once again! Cloud, what cloud?

[Tim Graham]

Probably not valid to compare mobile consumer services such as Sidekick/Microsoft that are not set up with legal T's and C's spelling out responsibility for data with enterprise "cloud" contracts containing those provisions. The latter are much more likely to protected at least as well -- and probably a lot better -- than the self-hosted versions that many companies have now.

[Ronbo]

Different industries work to different standards. Financial institutions are very careful with data - ever heard of a bank losing the records of an active account?

But some industries are very slipshod with data - health care, surprisingly, is incredibly bad, I worked at a certain gigantic HMO that was known to match lab results to the wrong patient records during one memorable week.

Microsoft isn't exactly know for top notch quality control, and I wouldn't trust them with anything that was truly irreplaceable. Then again, for the truly irreplaceable, I wouldn't trust any one source, keep it in more than one place.

I also wouldn't trust extremely valuable data to a free service, because the provider faces no financial hit if they lose your information.

Eventually there will be low-cost paid services to store your data in the cloud - redundant, reliable, flexible enough to back up your phone, your iPod, your computer, everything down to the memory seat settings in your car. With the cost of computing and data storage headed ever lower, give it six or eight years and some smart entrepreneur will wake up and smell the opportunity.

[Mark May]

The possibility of data loss in cloud applications is real. But so is the possibility of your phone being tossed in the toilet by one of your kids. Or of your computer hard drive crashing. When I am in control of the data, I know that I need to back it up.

The story here is not that there was a glitch in service. The story story should be that Microsoft and T-Mobile did not have any backup or mirroring of the data they were storing. What is in their contract with their customers? Did they make any assurances? As Tim Graham points out, enterprise customers have Service Level Agreements or Terms and Conditions with the service providers with penalties for failure to meet specified measures and objectives. Consumers in general do not have those protections.

[Art E]

This is clearly not "bringing the cloud back to earth."

No matter where you do computing and data storage, if you don't have redundancy, backup/recovery strategy, or a business continuity plan, you are at great risk.

T-Mobile let their vendor, Danger/Microsoft, operate without any oversight and everyone is paying the price. This is a vendor management failure by T-Mobile that damages their reputation.

On the Google risks disclosure, every SEC filing has a vast amount of end-of-the-world language.

[Pacific]

the real question is how are we going to power the cloud? this report has some interesting things to say about that:

http://www.twst.com/tt/info/info1665.htm
08.24.09: Data Hosting and Data Storage Services Report

here's an excerpt:
"TWST: Do you see any trends in terms of data center design or market location? What risk do these companies face in terms of facilities becoming obsolete?

Mr. Synesael: What we're really talking about then is power, and facilities back in the bubble days were probably being built out at sub-100 watts per square foot. Today you're seeing facilities being built at north of 150 watts per square foot. There is concern that the power requirements for servers will continue to go up at a Moore's Law-type number. The opposite argument, and I buy into this one, is that there is also now a lot more R&D being done on servers' improved power efficiency that had never been done before. It has become a big enough concern or cost that people are willing to deploy investment dollars into figuring out how to resolve that. And I think that in the coming years, we are going to see power efficiency meaningfully improved to the point where we'll get more throughput for that same amount of power consumption that we see today. So I don't foresee us continuing to go from 50 watts a square foot to 100 to 150 to 200 to a day where we're using 500 watts per square foot. I simply just don't see that being the reality. I think facilities that are being built today at 150, 200 watts per square foot should be sustainable business models for, I won't say indefinite because nothing's ever indefinite, but the foreseeable future. "