DAVID SARNO — Over the last year, the technology world has been enamored of the possibilities of moving into the cloud.
That's the latest trend in computing that enables consumers to forget about storing their software and data on local hard drives -- where it can be zapped by electrical surges and soft-drink spillage -- and let companies such as Amazon .com Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. worry about keeping it safe on a network of remote servers.
The cloud computing concept is so appealing that the city of Los Angeles is considering scrapping its current e-mail system and replacing it with a cloud-based offering from Google, joining more than 2 million businesses already using that company's system.
But a series of incidents involving cloud computing over the last several months has poked holes in the hype bubble, raising questions about the cloud's dependability -- and whether it's ready for use by a broader group of workers and businesses.
Last week, a computer failure cut off many users of the Sidekick mobile device from large amounts of personal data, including contacts, calendars and notes, that were stored on Microsoft servers. Microsoft and T-Mobile Inc. are the respective maker and carrier of the device.
Microsoft later said the failure was confined to a smaller system run by Danger Inc., its subsidiary that makes the Sidekick, and that much of the data would eventually be restored.
But the company also said it was not just the primary Danger database that failed, but also the backup -- and that restoring the lost data would take weeks.
Last month, Google weathered a pair of outages of its cloud-based e-mail system, one of which lasted nearly two hours, after the company made an error upgrading its own systems.
And in August, a huge cyber attack thought to originate from eastern Europe knocked Twitter offline for hours, a devastating blow from which it took the messaging service days to fully recover.
"It's still the early stages of this," said John Pescatore, an online security analyst at the research firm Gartner Inc., noting that offerings such as Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail started out as free products for consumers. Both companies are now pitching their online services to governments, universities and big businesses.
"As these clouds start to go after enterprise dollars, they'll build in the reliability and security," Pescatore said, but reaching the necessary level of sophistication may take the companies a few more years.
