A headline in the Times business news of Friday 18th June reads:

“Investors thankful for Sage’s wisdom in steering clear of the clouds”

The article itself goes on to explain that Intuit which “..has been quick to embrace the new world of “cloud computing” has had problems in that its servers went down for two days and its “300,000” small business users have been without access as a result. Consequently Sage is hoping to pick up new users.

I must confess to having had to read this article twice before I could fully take in the absolute nonsense it was spouting and the sheer stupidity of its content.

No doubt the failure of Intuit’s servers is a major issue – disruptive in the true sense of the word – and no doubt someone is in hot water for allowing it to happen. But one incident such as this is not a reason to abandon a new technology – even less justification for maintaining the old – especially when it is Sage.

I know of one major UK accountancy firm whose City office was without power for three days earlier this year when there was a major fault at the electricity sub station. As a result none of the staff could work in the office and had to be sent to other locations – I didn’t hear any one saying that as a result on premise servers and applications needed to be abandoned in favour of the Cloud (although had they been using the Cloud staff could work easily from home or anywhere else!). When a train breaks down there is hardly a cry to return to the horse and cart (even though there may be some in favour of such a move).

And surely this incident must be looked at in the same way. Of course, server failures – irrespective of where they are situated – are going to cause disruption but it is not a problem restricted to the Cloud.

If the gainsayers need foundation for their arguments they need to come up with something better than this!