Problems with the cloud

So this morning I sit down to do some work, and notice a few emails from Basecamp sitting in my inbox. Instead of responding (or even reading them) I pop open a Fluid instance of my Basecamp account so I can read the messages up there, in the cloud.

You know, the magic cloud that will free us all.

Except this morning there was a problem. Basecamp wasn’t loading. ‘No problem’ I say to myself, they’re having a hiccup. Let me check the status page at 37 Signals to see if a server fell over. Also, while I’m at it, I’ll tweet a message with a #basecamp tag, as I sometimes get helpful responses from support personnel that way.

Oops. Twitter is down. There’s a 503 error staring me in the face on their site. The API is dead to, or at least it’s dead to TweetDeck. So my guerilla support system is down as well.

This is one of the newer problems I’m starting to see with the cloud. Up to now most of the criticisms have centered around who owns the data? Or, what format is the data in? But what about: can I reliably access my data?

In light of the recent denial of service attacks on Facebook, Twitter and Google the reality is that cloud services are vulnerable to disruption by some rather unsavory people. In the past, online gambling sites have been plagued by extortion and protection rackets. While the recent attacks on Facebook and Twitter were apparently politically motivated, what’s to stop someone from attempting to extort a small service like Basecamp that a lot of small-to-medium businesses rely on? What if someone went after a big fish like Office Live, lets say by only disrupting traffic to one of its secure ports for a couple of hours randomly throughout the business day?

To be clear, I’m a fan of online services. I use them within reason and they make working with remote teams a snap. But I’m a bit leery about porting all of my business operations somewhere that could be shut down in such a manner. I think I’ll be keeping my bookkeeping on a local drive, thanks.

Note: Basecamp was down for other users, but not for long. Twitter, well, while much better these days is still plagued by the Fail Whale.