5 Superstorms in the History of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is supposed to be safe–and relatively speaking, it is. However, it’s still technology and no technology is completely immune to disasters. Here are the top 5 worst cloud disasters (yet), what happened and what can be learned after the storm has passed.

1. Amazon Web Services Disappears

It started innocently enough in April 2011. Amazon’s data center in Virginia was simply going through a network upgrade when a glitch went epic. The entire eastern region went down and it took four days to repair. That’s an entire lifetime considering Amazon’s position as the e-commerce leader. In response, Amazon issued a massive explanation that no one has time to read. The lesson here? Always plan for the worst.

2. Gmail Trouble

Gmail is the preferred email for many people and an abundance of companies depend on Google Drive for cloud-sharing strategies. However, Gmail has a knack for getting glitches. Most recently, nearly 150,000 people signed into Gmail to find absolutely nothing. Google provided updates promising a quick fix, but it took four days to complete. That meant zero access to sensitive emails for four entire business days–unacceptable. Always forward emails to a separate email account such as Yahoo! (just in case).

3. Hotmail’s Hurricane

Hotmail one-upped Gmail in 2010 when tens of thousands of accounts were wiped clean on New Year’s Eve. Microsoft was supposed to be cleaning out dummy accounts, but it somehow targeted real accounts instead. It took three days for the email to be restored, but a few unlucky individuals had to wait an additional three days. Hopefully their emails were being forwarded to a “just in case” email account.

4. The Salesforce Debacle

Salesforce.com has a one-hour shutdown in 2011, which doesn’t sound like much. However, the company is charged with a slew of important businesses and 60 minutes can sometimes cost millions of dollars. It was considered a “full-on failure” and there was nothing to be done. Needless to say, the companies Salesforce supports were outraged, but it’s not very surprising. Clouds can have glitches, too. Ideally, companies plan for surprise downtime so they’re not caught off guard.

5. PayPal’s Stumble

During the summer of 2009, PayPal went down for a few hours and millions of people couldn’t buy or sell items online. PayPal pointed fingers to a hardware failure, but that doesn’t help the millions of dollars that were lost in sales. The lesson here is to always offer payment alternatives and don’t count on PayPal to do it all.

There’s no guarantee that cloud storage will always be functioning at 100%. Play it safe, get backups in place and plan for worst case scenarios. Research reputable companies like Accuweb cloud hosting and know the systems that are in place.

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