Amazon crash reveals 'cloud' computing actually based on data centers

From the article:

> "Relying on someone else's IT to keep your business up and operating perfectly is like walking across Times Square without looking at traffic and relying on every bus, taxi bike and pedicab to give you the right of way automatically."

I enjoyed a quote I read on here the other day, paraphrased for symmetry:

Relying on someone else's Information Technology to keep your business up and operating perfectly is like relying on someone else's Structural Engineering to build and operate the skyscraper you use for your office.

Your business is unique in some way. Choose the right partners to rely on to do what they do well, so you can work on doing what you do better.

The title reads like it's an article from The Onion and I blame marketers for that. "Cloud computing" is no more than letting someone else handle your server layer to varying degrees. Yes, there may be some bells and whistles here and there but, at it's core, they are still servers sitting in someone's colo. They aren't magical, they don't "manage themselves", and they aren't immune to downtime. You still need to work to ensure stability. In some cases, you will even need to work harder to do so.

What's missing from "cloud computing" infrastructure is not some critical step that Amazon forgot.

It's a variety of competing "cloud" providers, allowing folks who run their services "in the cloud" to spread their machines/applications across multiple businesses.

Complex systems fail, regardless of who owns the hardware.

It seems that many people forgot how and why Amazon began to market its cloud computing solutions. Amazon had to build its infrastructure to support the Christmas rush, and its platform is idle most of the rest of the time. So they decided to sell these available computing resources.

Of course, this platform may fail, but whatever infrastructure you're relying upon it may fail at some point. Even when you're relying upon trucks to ship your products in time, having a backup rail plan may be a good idea.

However, I hope you business is mostly idle around Christmas, because there's little doubt that Amazon will serve its own applications first, so you'd better have a serious backup plan...

Everything was always a cloud, isn't it!! It's just that now it has become more prominent. Otherwise, except the ease of deployment and maintenance how is the current 'cloud based' setup different from the older 'non-cloud' based setups. For an end user the content always used to come from an unknown place which you can call a cloud or a server based on your whims and it still comes from the same unknown place 'The Cloud'. And for the vulnerabilities, it doesn't care what the weight of the host is. Even a personal hosting setup is equally susceptible.

And this is why the business created BS25999

you mean our servers aren't in the sky?!