Lessons learned when clouds burst
Recent outage at the cloud computing services of both Amazon and Microsoft show that systems architecture and resiliency are the weak links in what is still an emerging technology. May 20, 2011 | Aldo JosonOn May 5th, IT giant SAP said that the outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) on April 21st has made it harder to convince potential clients who were already sceptical in the first place of the security and resiliency of cloud computing; the service was down for 72 hours. Nearly one week earlier, Microsoft had suffered its own 15-hour outage with its Azure Cloud platform when it launched the service on April 15th (it also had sporadic outages of its enterprise mail service between May 9th and 12th). Potential customers such as banks, who are either already doubting the manifold and messianic promises that cloud computing was supposed to offer or who have been inundated by stiff and non-equivocal warnings from their regulators, have now been treated to a first-hand view of what happens when cloud computing services fail: business operations, and possibly also revenue streams, revenue comes to a painful, grinding and frustration-filled halt. The cloud has proven to be worryingly vulnerable. And so, what now? Is this as some commentators predict “the end for cloud computing”? I don’t think so. Like all emerging technologies or disruptive infrastructure models there is a maturing phase which is inevitably shaped by outages such as these. The cloud is still maturing and evolving. This is not the first—and neither will it be the last—cloud computing outage. The bigger question is whether the industry is learning from these initial snags to develop more mature solutions to operational problems and cost efficiency challenges. While it may not be the end of the technology, it has certainly slowed down the adoption process of cloud computing. Moving forward, I think these are the imp... Please login to read the complete article. If you already have an account, you can login now or subscribe/register.
Categories: Core Banking, Technology & OperationsCore Banking,technology, Core Banking,Technology & Operations, Keywords:SAP, Microsoft, Cloud Computing SAP, Microsoft, Cloud computing
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