Dark Clouds on the Cloud Computing Sky

Cloud computing is the wave of the future, isn’t it? These days many voices would make you believe that only total blockheads could have doubts about it. The Cloud is touted as the ultimate outsourcing solution.

As often is the case: The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory. In my experience the weakest link is the ISP. Here is a mini case study.

A medium-sized company in the telecom business is critically dependent on its Internet connectivity. Its solutions are deployed all over the world. The company is bound by strict service level agreements and monitors its numerous installations over the Internet.

Being very conscious about its Internet dependency the company leases duplicate, redundant connections from a renowned ISP. A great idea. The ISP states that there is no single point of failure. The telecom company discovers this is not true when it is completely cut off from the ‘Net for a whole day because of a failure in a centrally placed router.

Less than a year later there is a DNS problem with another service provider. It unsettles the business for several days.

The problem is not the availability of Cloud applications. The applications may be solid enough. The problem is the infrastructure connecting the customer to the application. When it works we don’t notice it, and so tend to neglect its presence, but it’s really quite fragile. Today even high profile ISPs seem unable to live up to stringent requirements.