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Przygode said he sees a potential short term impact in cloud adoption caused by Amazon's fumble, but the industry will right itself.
"I don't think it's going to go backward," he said. "But some people are going to run for the hills."
Bob Shinn, senior managing partner of cloud strategy at Grayslake, Ill.-based cloud consulting firm Cloud Silver Lining, said the outage will have some immediate impact on cloud deployments, but will not lead to abandonment of cloud computing or Amazon for the misstep. However, Shinn said Amazon's outage will enable solution providers to illustrate how best to approach the cloud.
"Unfortunately the outage will impact adoption. We do not see an exodus from cloud or Amazon. We do see some basic changes that would have eliminated business impact," he said. "Design for failure from the start. This includes going across AWS availability zones. This is one small example."
David Hoff, vice president of technology with Atlanta-based cloud solution provider Cloud Sherpas said he's dealt firsthand with a major cloud outage, Google in September 2009. One of the major responses to that outage was that customers became more aware of their terms of service and reviewed the conditions of their cloud services more closely.
"Something like this brings those obligations to the forefront," he said.
Brian Fino, managing partner for New York-based Fino Consulting said consultants will be able to take a bigger role in helping clients select which cloud vendors fit best in their environments. It will also educate users to ask cloud support questions up front.
"They'll want to know what happens. Who do I call if there's an outage?" Fino said.
Kirven added that Amazon's outage raise the issue of cloud support. He said Bluewolf's phones started ringing as soon as the outage was reported, not because Bluewolf clients were impacted, but because they wanted to ask if they could be affected.
"They need to partner with a firm they can get on the phone and talk through issues with," Kirven said, adding that "If you're going to stake your infrastructure on it, you need a throat to choke."
One thing solution providers agreed on was that outages are the name of the game. They're going to happen, but it's being prepared for them that makes a big difference. "Outages, for better or worse, are part of the IT industry," Hoff said.
Hoff said he doesn't see the Amazon outage prompting a cloud mass exodus. "It doesn't drive people away from the cloud, but causes them to question what they're getting for their commitments," he said.
And GlassHouse's Damoulakis said the Amazon outage is not an indication that cloud computing is the wrong approach, it's a wakeup call that what companies need and what they buy should be in sync, which will open a service opportunities for VARs to ensure that their client's cloud needs and cloud deployments are a strong match. "You can't just simply write a check and your problems go away," he said.
Overall, Hoff said, the outage is a reminder that cloud computing is still in its early stages and issues are bound to arise.
"Buyer beware. Know what you're getting into," he said. "There are going to be outages at least for the foreseeable future, because the technology is so immature."
For Bluewolf's Kirven, the Amazon cloud outage is "cautionary tale" but good will come out if it as companies pay closer attention to planning, deploying and supporting cloud environments, where Bluewolf will offer guidance. "The benefit still outweighs the risk," he said.
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