The disruption of Amazon’s cloud computing platform has stirred up mixed feelings that some CIOs have about the tradeoffs inherent in buying software and computing power over the Web. Amazon Web Services crashed on Friday amid severe thunderstorms in Virginia, causing interruptions to Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, and other companies that lease software and computing power from Amazon, instead of running those operations in their own datacenters. While that arrangement can save companies a tremendous amount of time and effort and allow them to focus on their core operations, it comes with a price. When AWS crashes, its customers get little in the way of individual communication and support.
AWS customers can sign up for automated alerts to the company’s service dashboard via an RSS feed, which lets them know when there’s a problem with service. Though Amazon provides paid options, which allow customers to e-mail or call the company for support, it does not proactively contact customers in the event of an outage. Amazon isn’t the only vendor who has fielded complaints about its information dissemination; Salesforce.com and Google also point companies to dashboards during service outages, but don’t regularly reach out to customers. For some CIOs, that’s just not good enough.
“There is no way to know if you are looking at a 30-minute problem, or a 10-hour problem,” said Jeremy Farber, CTO of CarDomains.com, which hosts some of its services on AWS. Farber said Amazon’s limited communication with customers during an outage have always been frustrating. While Amazon’s service dashboard informs customers what is happening in across AWS, it offers no predictions as to when service will be completely restored. And it won’t tell customers what is happening with their specific computing services, Farber said. He would like to be able to get a better idea of what is happening with his systems.
Customers who think they can negotiate more service guarantees when brokering contracts often find themselves disappointed, though. There’s no indication that Amazon is likely to change its policies or its business model. Dashboards are the most efficient way to communicate with customers during widespread outages, said analyst Lydia Leong, who covers cloud computing for Gartner.
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via Amazon’s Cloud: Take It Or Leave It – The CIO Report – WSJ.