Failure in T-Mobile servers calls cloud computing into question

Derek Brush 10 Oct, 2009 at 8:57pm ET Article published in Tech

Comments

1. 
   10 Oct 2009 ~ 9:34pm MachineDog So, they didn't backup the cloud's data? What?
2. 
   10 Oct 2009 ~ 11:54pm GnomeQueen Do we know if any other phones are affected by the same issue? Because I was thinking about getting a G1 with T-Mobile, but I don't want this stuff to happen to me.
3. 
   11 Oct 2009 ~ 12:02am Thrax Nothing uses this but the Sidekick.
4. 
   11 Oct 2009 ~ 4:56pm ardichoke This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you fail to have a cohesive disaster recovery plan.
5. 
   12 Oct 2009 ~ 1:56am Jeremiah Staes I don't think this is a failure of cloud computing, but a failure of implementation. What dumb gourd doesn't back up their stuff? This seems more like bad architecture than anything.
   
   As a user of lots of cloud services that do some decently heavy lifting, they're way more reliable than even the big-iron corporate stuff I've worked on. However, it's new, so it's going to be kicked at every opportunity.
6. 
   12 Oct 2009 ~ 8:48am AlexDeGruven

   Jeremiah Staes wrote:

   I don't think this is a failure of cloud computing, but a failure of implementation. What dumb gourd doesn't back up their stuff? This seems more like bad architecture than anything.
   
   As a user of lots of cloud services that do some decently heavy lifting, they're way more reliable than even the big-iron corporate stuff I've worked on. However, it's new, so it's going to be kicked at every opportunity.

   
   This is the truth. Having data ONLY in the cloud is only one copy. Since data is only stored on the device as long as it has power, that doesn't actually count as a copy.
   
   This is a boneheaded implementation. If you're going to have the cloud as the only authoritative source of the data, then you have to have some way for the user to keep a local copy. Addressbook and calendar data do not take up that much space. Having 1GB of internal flash storage dedicated to what essentially amounts to a PIM data backup would be trivial.
   
   T-Mo really dropped the ball on this one, and it's unfortunate that cloud computing is going to take some of the fall for it.