On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Jesse Wilkins <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>
> Compare cloud services to the electricity grid. Nobody could imagine in
> 1900
> outsourcing all of their energy needs to "the electricity cloud" - what
> happens if it goes down? What happens if the "power line" is cut? What
> happens if they jack the prices way up? What Amazon, Google, and the like
> are trying to provide is the information services grid.


unfortunately your analogy fails as I believe that Amazon, Google and other
like providers do not have in place agreements such as the ones that the
electrical generating companies have in case of a disaster. In the case of
the power companies there was a benefit to them to interconnect. They had
increased reliability by connecting to each other.

As it currently stands there are various interlocking agreements amongst
power generators that allow them to pull electricity from other states when
demand increases. the only place this doesn't happen is in Texas which is
not interconnected. In the case of disasters power generators rely on each
other for support. For example several years ago Richmond was hit by the
remnants of a hurricane, power was out for 10 or more days in some parts.
Assistance to restore power came from as far away as Houston (that I know
of).

Now a couple of weeks ago gmail suffered some problems that prevented folks
from accessing their gmail accounts. Were they able to call upon assistance
from Yahoo or Hotmail or someother free email service? Nope, nada, nothing.
Each of these is a standalone service. what happens when a local government
entity decides to use gmail as their email service and gmail goes down?  How
fast will Google respond. Or here's an other item, you have a Yahoo group
and you've received a subpoena to produce the emails that are part of that
group? What type of support will Yahoo provide you? How easy will it be to
produce those emails?

or I have a wishlist on Amazon. I recently asked how can I download my
wishlist or at least print it out? The answer from Amazon support was "you
can't" you just screenprint each page. Gee thanks guys.

as it stands now there is now information grid like the power grid. We have
a bunch of information silos

-- 
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
[log in to unmask]
Richmond, Va

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