Amazon Failure Shouldn't Have Brought Down the Web

PERTH, Australia, Oct. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Amazon's cloud storage and database services have suffered massive issues over the past day, bringing down some of the web's top sites including Reddit, Imgur, Pinterest, Foursquare and servers for the popular game Minecraft. Cloud application platform, Heroku, owned by salesforce.com, has also been struck by the outage.

"To avoid outages, businesses need to use best-practice for cloud services," says Damian Bramanis, Director of Advisory Services at Sentinus.com.au. "That means not putting all of your eggs in one basket, so cloud disasters don't become your disaster too." Many cloud services can cope with failures by spreading the service across different data centres and 'availability zones'. Businesses who followed this best-practice model would have seen their operations continue. "We recommend spreading your services across separate cloud vendors," says Bramanis, "to provide the best protection from disasters."

For many organisations, quality of service is one of the top barriers to adopting cloud services. "We're seeing businesses rate quality of service as the second-most important issue for cloud computing," says Bramanis. "The first is data security."

The reaction of cloud providers to the outages has been promising. Amazon has reacted very quickly to restore service. "We've seen a rapid and professional response to resolve these issues," says Bramanis. "Vendors aren't only working hard to fix the problems, they're keeping customers informed with regular updates."

Sentinus is offering a free download of the 80-point Safety Check for Cloud Computing, which is available on their website http://www.sentinus.com.au/ . This tool can be used by businesses to protect themselves in the cloud, minimise the risk of outages like this, and ensure they can trust their vendor.

"Ultimately, staying safe in the cloud is a matter of trust," Bramanis says. "It's important to trust your cloud vendor at the best of times, but it's critical in the face of major problems."

About

Founded in 2012, Sentinus Pty Ltd has a mission to help organisations keep their data safe in the cloud. The company provides information and services for IT professionals to get business value from the cloud, without all of the risk. Sentinus is a privately held company, headquartered in Perth, Western Australia.

http://www.sentinus.com.au/

Media Contact

Damian Bramanis, Director Advisory Services (+61 4) 49 856 811
[email protected]

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SOURCE Sentinus