Time to Rethink the Commercial Cloud Thing?

The failure of the Amazon Web Services' Virginia data center after a severe storm Friday and the hours it took the company to restore service -- while Defense Information Systems Agency cloud services chugged along without interruption -- sure seem like good reasons to question putting any federal data in the commercial cloud.

Yeah, the price may look right at first, but does it come at human and financial costs if the commercial data center goes dark due to acts of nature?

The joint Defense and Veterans Affairs Department Interagency Program Office specified Amazon cloud services in a technical blueprint  for the integrated electronic health record released last month.

I thought this idea was balmy at the time, and it looks even nuttier after the meltdown of Amazon’s Virginia data center last week.

I have my own very personal reasons for preferring to do business with DISA than Amazon.

More than a decade ago I visited Amazon headquarters in Seattle on a reporting trip for Computeworld, showed up 15 minutes early, and asked for directions to the men’s room.

I was told that I would have to wait for a security guard to escort me. “Why?” I asked.

The answer: “People talk in men’s rooms” -- implying I might overhear the company’s grand plans to destroy every bookstore on the planet.

I’ve been to multiple DISA facilities around the world -- including the famed Bahrain data center -- and the agency has always allowed me to use the loo without an escort.