July 20, 2008 5:44 PM PDT
S3 down again with no visibility into cause or time to resolutions
More downtime for Amazon S3 doesn't make the Cloud any more appealing for enterprises.
One of the main reasons enterprises won't be quick to embrace the Cloud for meaningful applications is due to the lack of visibility associated with downtime. Most companies are too paranoid (rightly so) to have no idea what caused system downtime or to have a clear mean-time to resolution.
As an S3 customer we should definitely be able to get notifications and have the ability to ask for refunds. I couldn't figure out how to do either one.
For basic monitoring you can get free updates on a number of Cloud services from Hyperic's Cloudstatus.com and Amazon's Service Health Dashboard .
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
