Lately we've been on a roll within the cloud interoperability movement. With the recent inclusion of interoperability & portability guidelines within the new Federal Government's cloud computing mandate or the long list of supporters publicly speaking / advocating for interoperability. The topic has become a central issue within the emerging cloud technology scene. Yet one problem still remains, it's what I'm calling the "Fear Of God" (FOG) effect.

Today was one of those days. The folks at venturebeat.com

said it best. "When Google fails, the Internet fails". If you need proof, just look at your webstats between 11am and 12pm (EST) this morning. If your sites are like mine, you'll notice a sharp drop in traffic across most of your websites durning the outage. It was even worse if you rely on Google Apps or use a Google Blog. You're dead in the water. I couldn't even complain on my blog because it wasn't responding.

The fact is Google has become the de facto way most internet users access information, whether it's search, mail or other various internet applications, like it or not Google has become the conduit for most people's internet experience.

So back to why this matters for cloud interoperability.. My question is, has Google gotten too big to fail? Simply Google's failure today perfectly illustrates why it is important to have an exit strategy, this is especially true when relying on cloud computing services. Again, It's not that I want to leave, it's just nice to know it's possible and a little fear in this particular case certainly helps shed light on why portability and interoperability are so important.

Graphic courtesy of Venturebeat

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