I have a love/hate view on the 'cloud' As developers/dbas/'as other duties assigned' employees, we all know the cloud is just a fancy word for internet based services -- and i'm sure companies that have been doing hosting for a long time is like whoa nelly. And as much as I hate marketing schemes , I have to settle on the fact that I have been in this business for 12 years, but I still have 30 years to go before I can get a gumment check, so I have accept that the innovators of my profession keep the ball rolling so I can keep a job. The problem then falls on me to stay relevant in that arena. And the truth is technology moves faster than business, so I have time to find a place in the 'cloud' world, which I think will take off. Why because for all us 'older heads', we need to spend some time around some younger kids - and they are (more) accepting of these changing technologies. We see all the business reasons why everything that glitters isn't gold, but they just see gold. Sure a lot of things will fail but in the end it will produce new growth of our industry.

But I have an issue with what SJ said "However the people running many of the daily operations at cloud service providers aren't the best of the best IT people. They're the IT people just like you and me that have a job to do, and do it with varying degrees of professionalism, and success."

OK - I know what he meant, but could have re-phrased it, cause I'm sure the cloud providers would at least think they have hired the best of the best and so does my company -- i think 🙂 .

In the end, I think these cloud failures are a great point for us as professionals to use to the business. We have to tell them, look they have a 'me' there too, but their 'me' has to do this for a bunch of companies and there is no gaurantee that their 'me' isn't going to make a mistake. So the only answer to having the best system ever is to plan the best system ever. The cloud failures weren't a technology failure but a process failure.