\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“What is the cloud? Well, the cloud is somebody else’s computer,” he explains.<\/p>\n
And cloud bursts are not uncommon. Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud provider in the world, suffered a partial outage<\/a> in December 2021, affecting thousands of customers.<\/p>\n Plus, cloud services sometimes get turned off, just like Gridhost. Google is retiring its cloud platform IoT Core, external<\/span><\/a> this August. People have used it to connect smart home devices, among other things.<\/p>\n Data from the Uptime Institute, external<\/span><\/a>, 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 (\u00a382,000) in total losses, up substantially from 39% in 2019,” the Institute says.<\/p>\n Cloud computing is increasingly popular with companies, says Kristina McElheran at the University of Toronto. She and colleagues conduct regular, large-scale surveys, external<\/span><\/a> 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. <\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n