My previous post about the Sidekick failure seems to have whipped up a bit of a frenzy around whether or not the Sidekick platform is an actual cloud service. On one side you people saying it isn't a cloud because it's not redundant or distributed or api accessible or whatever. On the other you have the media saying hey it's a web based service, so it's a cloud.

Whether the Sidekick platform is or isn't "cloud computing" is totally secondary to the real issue. The Sidekick failure has beautifully illustrated a major potential problem facing the use of any remotely hosted web services, cloud or otherwise and this is trust.

My issue with the sidekick cloud debate isn't whether or not it's a failure of cloud computing. You can't blame a buzzword. Cloud computing isn't any single technology but instead it's a new way to market, manage, deploy and operate web centric software and infrastructure. So I do agree it isn't a failure of cloud computing so much as a failure to build an adequate DR strategy among other things.

This failure does in the most simple terms demonstrate a key problem facing cloud computing, you are trusting someone else to manage your data / infrastructure. But leading an argument by saying it isn't a cloud because clouds can't fail is ridiculous.

Read the original blog entry...