Internet outages won’t hurt the cloud, expert says

Some firms hesitant to move to cloud computing cite the potential for internet outages disrupting their work as a major concern. However, according to Jeff Kaplan, recent events are evidence that those concerns are unfounded.

A recent Comcast service outage across the East Coast failed to slow massive Cyber Monday sales, wrote Kaplan for InternetEvolution.com. According to Kaplan, this is evidence that even major internet service disruptions won’t have an impact on cloud computing.

“[The outage] was felt by millions of businesses and end-users. But the economic impact of the outage has proven to be relatively insignificant,” wrote Kaplan. “Comcast and other cloud vendors are pointing out that this was a unique occurrence and was quickly resolved.”

Kaplan also dismisses critics who compare the growth of cloud computing to that of the failed “dot com” movement of the early 2000’s. “Service delivery capabilities, business model economics and customer attitudes have all evolved and matured,” he wrote.

The cloud computing market is growing rapidly in value. It is expected to be worth $16.7 billion by 2013.