T-Mobile Sidekick glitch bodes bad for cloud computing

The companies offer cloud computing service to store important data for their customers.

Last week, Microsoft’s Danger witnessed a technical problem in their computers systems, thus leaving many T-Mobile Sidekick users without access to contacts, calendar entries, photographs, and other personal information.

The situation only aggravated over the weekend as they tried to restore functionality.

“Our teams continue to work around the clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information,” T-Mobile stated on its Web site. “However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

Additionally, it warned, “Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power."

Microsoft further stated that the data not recovered so far may be permanently lost.

Cloud’s credibility questioned
There have been several cloud computing outages that have hit users in the past. Recently, Google Inc.’s Gmail service went offline for hours, thus blocking access to e-mail accounts, contact lists, and related functions.

But the recent sidekick glitch is severe and can transform into one of biggest disasters in the history of cloud computing.

Though the major players like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are increasingly investing in cloud computing to meet users’ office productivity needs, the repeated outages have raised doubts over the adoption of these online applications.

Users will resist in moving their communications to the cloud if doubts linger over its reliable availability and an efficient backup system.

End users voice annoyance
Though the cell phone provider has started apologizing and crediting its customers’ accounts with one month of free data service, it has not mollified the end users.

Many have taken to forums, blogs etc and have voiced annoyance with the recent outage that has affected users in the worst possible way.

A user named stephenzerotwo commented on engadget, “If tmobile thinks that they can buy me off with a 19.99 credit after losing every phone # contact i gathered for the last 3-5 years of my life they are sorely mistaken. Class actions here we come. Goodbye tmobile, goodbye sidekick. This is more than unacceptable. Other then this post i am absolutely speechless from rage.”

“How does a company so large lose that much data? Okay, fine, server loss. I understand that. Wait... there's no backup? I mean, come on. Even hosting companies that have their own server farms have backup,” commented bloqhead on mashable.com

Another reader named atish505 posted his view on cnet news as saying, “EPIC Failure. Do not trust anything and leave anything to Microsoft. The unreliability of MSFT stretches form Win Mobile to their Data Centers. Have your own data and backup first, then put things on cloud, rain, wind, dust etc.”