Using cloud services, by definition, makes a business reliant on a third party, says Vili Lehdonvirta of the Oxford Internet Institute and author of Cloud Empires.

“What is the cloud? Well, the cloud is somebody else’s computer,” he explains.

And cloud bursts are not uncommon. Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud provider in the world, suffered a partial outage in December 2021, affecting thousands of customers.

Plus, cloud services sometimes get turned off, just like Gridhost. Google is retiring its cloud platform IoT Core, external this August. People have used it to connect smart home devices, among other things.

Data from the Uptime Institute, external, an advisory organisation, suggests that while the cloud is not getting significantly less reliable overall, high-cost outages are becoming more common. “Over 60% of failures result in at least $100,000 (£82,000) in total losses, up substantially from 39% in 2019,” the Institute says.

Cloud computing is increasingly popular with companies, says Kristina McElheran at the University of Toronto. She and colleagues conduct regular, large-scale surveys, external of hundreds of thousands of firms in the US. Citing other research, she also notes that the shift to online working during the pandemic has further accelerated cloud adoption.

“The cloud is a game changer for survival, growth and productivity for the young, especially the young and small,” explains Dr McElheran, referring to start-ups. “But this is where the trade-off comes in – they lose control.”