Cloud Computing case studies

I've written about some of the considerations that go into the choice between physical infrastructure and new SAAS services such as Amazon's S3 and EC2. I also covered why the fact that you are comfortable relying on a hosting provider for rack mounted servers (so called ping & power) doesn't mean necessarily that you would come to the same conclusion about SAAS services.

Here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say about that tradeoff just a few days ago:

"Today was a bad day for a new computing model that could one day be the norm. Amazon’s S3 service –which companies can use to rent data storage on Amazon’s tech gear — crashed this morning, knocking many small businesses offline and highlighting one of the model’s drawbacks: You’re putting your operations in somebody else’s hands." (from Is Amazon’s Small Crash a Giant Crash for Cloud Computing?)

In researching these three posts, I came across this which reminded me that this wasn't the first time this happened, I guess not surprisingly:

"Cautionary tale indeed. It’s the other side of the wonderful world of mashups and web 2.0 and web services and all that jazz. If I build my product on the back of your service, then the quality of what I deliver depends on your carrying through on your promises. Not a very strong position to be in." (from A cautionary utility computing tale - or the dark side of Mashups)