Recent high-profile outages at cloud computing services have raised questions about whether the cloud is reliable enough for business. The answer comes down to how much risk your business is willing to take, reports Mark Songini at Computerworld.

Cloud providers often guarantee less than the four-nines reliability that businesses have historically expected from service providers, and it is not always clear who pays the price for downtime. Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) service level agreement, for example, states that "The Google Apps SLA does not apply to...any performance issues: (i) caused by factors outside of Google's reasonable control." The term "reasonable control" is subject to interpretation, however, and it could end up costing a lot in legal fees to convince a provider to see it from the customer's perspective.

"Most existing cloud contracts don't cover the fact that it's a loss-of-revenue issue for companies," says Ray Wang, an analyst at Forrester Research. "You'll receive credits for future service, but there's really no way to cover your losses."

Despite the lack of clarity around service levels and liability, the appeal of the cloud's pay-as-you-go computer processing and the ability to expand storage without an expanding infrastructure budget is a strong lure, especially for start-ups and small businesses. Larger businesses can pay more for greater reliability, but the arrangement may also require a multi-year contract. The trade-off between reliability and cost is a calculation that every business has to determine for itself.

For more:
- see Mark Songini's article at Computerworld

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