The recent Christmas Eve failure of Netflix pointed to a widely under-touted feature of cloud applications that companies need to concern themselves about. True, there has been much press about the security risks of the cloud, but this failure had nothing to do with security. The origin of the problem rested in the fact that Netflix relies on Amazon for its server base. And on Christmas Eve, Amazon's load balancing process failed, sending several servers down and making Netflix unable to access its movies.
So the customers at home who might have wanted to watch their favourite Christmas flick were jarred into the reality of depending on a cloud service.
For business, this is a serious lesson to consider. The reliability of most established cloud services is quite good, but the fact remains that the operational consistency and reliability of a particular service remains outside the control of the users. Any company considering outsourcing its critical applications to the cloud needs to consider this fact of life.For more on the Netflix issue, check this article.
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