COOP: Some are Probably Lovin' Cloud Computing Right Now

The aftermath of an unusual winter storm in late Fall left initially almost three million customers in the North East with out power.  Power companies are estimating that it could take days for power to be restored.  This affects not only residential customers, but also thousands of business both large and small.

Just a little while ago, there was a great uproar over the uncertain availability of Cloud computing and storage systems to meet the needs of consumer and corporate customers.  With day long outages at Amazon, Apple, and others, pundits rose significant concerns about the Cloud:

http://kaplowtech.blogspot.com/2011/05/excuse-me-you-are-talking-like-idiot.html

However, I am sure that there are now thousands of businesses that moved to Google Apps, Microsoft 365 (as well as the millions of customers that use Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, etc.), or moved their private corporate systems to Cloud service providers that are up and running in the middle of these massive power outages.  Getting their workers back on-line using 3G wireless, finding an Internet cafe, or alternate business location with Internet access.

Companies with critical business IT systems in buildings that are not true Data Centers are probably a bit out of luck.  Some believe that it is great to be able to hug their IT hardware, right now they need a hug from their "significant other" as the CEO is probably non-too-pleased.

As usual, it is all about risk management.  In this case, the potential of days of interrupted IT for your business against fear of moving some critical business resources into more shared environment.

It will be interesting to see there are Cloud marketing campaigns that make these points.