back to article Cloud computing is FAIL and here’s why

Adobe’s spectacular FAIL over the last 48 hours confirmed, rather than revealed, cloud computing to be so unreliable as to be positively dangerous. Cloud computing is shite. It takes over everything you’ve got, then farts in your face and runs away giggling. For those readers blissfully ignorant of what us media production …

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    1. Bakana

      Re: Fog Computing

      Uh, the "'mainframe / terminal' model of computing" was generally known for the fact that 99% of the Work and Data on the Mainframe belonged to the Owner of the Mainframe in question.

      The "Rent it out to Other People" model was an exercise in corporate musical chairs that mostly occurred between Mega-Corporations.

      Joe Q. Public was almost never rich enough to play in that sandbox.

      Besides, even in the bad old days, Mainframe Reliabvility was 99.999%

      Downtime, in the rare event that it happened, was seldom more than an hour and generally occurrred on a "once in 5 years" schedule.

      That's so much better than the current Server model of once a month for "Lord knows how long, this time. We'll send you an E-Mail when we find out what's wrong".

  1. Immenseness

    Cloud authentication

    I wouldn't touch anything cloudy with your bargepole, but this is really more about the stupidity of allowing companies to get away with having local and sometimes very expensive software that assumes you have an always on connection and that their end is always up (oo-er mussus!) and then using that as some kind of DRM sh!te control to "protect" "their" software. That's a nice piece of expensive software that your business depends on you have there. Shame if anything should happen to it or you couldn't access it... When I say allowing them to get away with it, I am looking at you big businesses. You have the clout to lobby that smaller companies and individuals do not.

    They just don't understand end user requirements for reliability and that not being able to use the software for even short periods of time can be a huge loss. Sadly, a lot of end users don't realise the risk either, although they might now.

    As they charge by the month, they should be offering refunds all round in my view.

    I hope the affected users didn't lose out too much.

    1. Milen
      Big Brother

      Re: Cloud authentication

      >> They just don't understand end user requirements for reliability ...

      They do but it is expensive to do anything about it. Sometimes it just makes more short-term financial sense to ship a crappy product and let someone else worry about the consequences.

      Edit: Not referring to Adobe specifically, just in general. I haven't had to use or pirate their products for years now.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dark Cloud

    A million users unable to work on their projects for a day, some no doubt with deadlines that were missed because of this failure. But I'm sure that the Adobe billing system didn't go down for a second, because that's what "mission critical application" means to Adobe.

  3. Sean Kennedy

    Clouds are so last week

    Haven't you heard? It's all about the "Internet of Things". Now, I can hear you cynics out there thinking ( it's a gift ), "But things were already on the internet!", and you'd be "technically" correct ( especially in the case of some specialty fetish sites ). But what we're talking about here are "Things(tm)". You know. With a capital T.

    Presumably, clouds would constitute a "Thing(tm)". Web2.0? Perhaps another "Thing(tm)".

    Maybe Adobe's problem isn't the draconian DRM, nor it's over-reliance on their obviously incompetent staff, but that they simply do not have enough "Things(tm)".

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Clouds are so last week

      I don't feel nearly as cynical about the IoT. In fact I find the potential quite exciting. I'm also sold on cloud and SaaS ... but that's no reason why I shouldn't shout out when they go wrong.

      1. Mike Pellatt

        Re: Clouds are so last week

        You should be cynical about the IoT. In particular, the security capabilities of the average device.

  4. All names Taken
    Alien

    Disagreement here dude!

    What network downtime is not embarrassing?

    So if it is embarrassing should we avoid it all together or, a bit like nuclear energy, realise we have to dance with new technologies through to them maturing?

    If so then science would die (what is the point of intellectualising a deep understanding built on theory, observation of observables, peer reviews, guvmint funding, the models are robust until they are demonstrated to be silly, ...

    Kudos to Adobe for having the cojones to make a decent commercial model of it!

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Disagreement here dude!

      "to make a decent commercial model of it!"

      Erm... I....

  5. markheathcote

    Perfect timing vs Microsoft statement at TechEd14

    And timely too... just a short time after Brad Anderson of Microsoft said that cloud is now as stable, if not more stable, than anything inside the corporate datacentre and we should deploy to it as a primary platform. Funny. Here is a reference to it... http://www.smiile.biz/articles/2014/5/13/cloud-more-stable-than-your-own-datacentre-maybe-but

  6. omgitsautom

    Especially enjoyed the comment on William Gibson vs Irvine Welsh

  7. ecofeco Silver badge

    So it's not just me?

    Good to see that people are getting wise to the giant Achilles heel of "cloud computing."

    Does anyone remember WHY PCs became popular? No, the real reason. Because it let people disconnect from the time-shared mainframe model and get work done when they felt like it without asking permission from anyone.

    Cloud computing, like enterprise desktop VM, wants to take us BACK to that model.

    1. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: So it's not just me?

      Thing is, it's not even a proper cloud service - it's just a crappy authentication server.

      But they borked the db and built the system with no fall-back.

      With hilarious consequences.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: So it's not just me?

        I bet it's more the case that, whatever they did, borked BOTH the system AND the fallback at the same time. Failsafe Failure, IOW. When Murphy REALLY doesn't like you, no precaution you can make will save you.

    2. Bakana

      Re: So it's not just me?

      Uh, actually, most of the people who made the PC popular never HAD the option of connecting to a time shared Mainframe. They saw a use for a computer in their daily lives and suddenly, there was an option that was Affordable for the first time ever.

      Even the people who Did have acces to the Mainframe didn't purchase a PC to Replace that access. The bought the PC for their own Personal use, independent of their Employment. That's what the "Personal" part of "Personal Computer" was all about.

      What that DID do was drive the cost of a PC down to the point where it was cheaper to buy a PC and install a Terminal Emulator than it was to buy a custom built Mainframe Terminal. AT which point Corporations started buying PCs by the Truckload, driving costs down even Further. All to the benefit of Joe Q. Public...

  8. kamikrazee

    and this is just a preview

    This is nothing. The day is coming when Adobe and the other Big brothers will decide who publishes and what gets published, and nevermind if the cloud is working or if it is raining or whatever.

    I once thought I would die before this day came, (I mean, techno overreach and the exaggeration of salespeople is not a new development), but damn if it isn't happening before the death panels and social value courts are up and working.....

  9. Nanners

    It was Microsoft's fault

    'nough said.

  10. John Munyard

    Perhaps they should have tried switching it off and then switching it on again.

    If that fails log a ticket and it will be put into the Bangalore Support Team's Kanban backlog for sprint assessment.

  11. Herby

    Everything old is new again...

    So, we go back to the "terminal" that sits on your desk, and connects to "central". Jeez, we did this back in the 60's. Then came minicomputers, then microcomputers, then the PeeCee, all in an effort to get the compute engine closer to the user where they can blow it up themselves. If the local compute engine blows up, just shift to the one you have next door.

    Fast forward to today, and we go back to the "as a service" people and the non -local control of things. Then you get single points of failure (authentication scheme). Not too good.

    In the end, I want to own my own home, not rent it forever. I may want to "improve" it as well to suit my needs. Good luck with that on a rental!

    So, Cloud == Stupid, which gives stupid a bad image!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No FAILSAFE?.... Adobe are the greediest dumbest MOTHERFUCKERS ever...

    In the related Reg articles last year many people myself included pointed out the inherent flaws in this brute-force approach that Adobe was taking with its 'valued customers'. The fact that they didn't build-in a failsafe is unforgivable. Moreover, the fact that their support staff didn't realize or didn't care that logins were needed to post on the forums deserves a firing squad!

    Not withstanding the risks of BitTorrent / warez hacking, how difficult would it be to have a solution whereby a series of keystrokes bring up a dialog that allows entering a voucher that can be emailed by Adobe in the event of a meltdown and gives emergency 24 hours access?

    This is simply extraordinary, and it shows how the suits are in the charge of everything, while tech geniuses are demoted or outsourced. Whether its the RBS/Ulster meltdown or privacy or financial fiascos like Target, corporations and companies are increasingly treating their tech side with disdain!

    The problem here is executives are so removed from it all, many are even of a generation that just doesn't get it! They need to get their bottoms smacked. I'm so glad I no longer work in corporate IT. I live humbly but I live free!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No FAILSAFE?.... Adobe are the greediest dumbest MOTHERFUCKERS ever...

      Moreover, the fact that their support staff didn't realize or didn't care that logins were needed to post on the forums deserves a firing squad!

      From their perspective that must have been a bonus and a feature worth keeping. No nasty PR problems to handle online on top of a royal screwup - now the impact is at best anecdotal. Can you imagine the mess if they had to moderate the comments of all those irate users?

      I'm more and more convinced it's really worth avoiding that company altogether. Their software is already as uncontrollable as it comes - my pet hate is an install routine that then goes off and fetches the actual update as it gives me zero direct data on the size of the update, and little ability to scan for malware. Heck, even the reader does it. On top of that, NONE of their software offers direct access to T&Cs - all they do is point you at a web page with a gazillion different statement that are also multi-lingual but sorted on the English name of the language.

      No thanks - I have found alternatives for most.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Downtime unheard of on Fat-Clients?

    Adobe should improve their login, problem solved.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh... obviously not great, but this stuff happens on premise too. It is not like this could only have happened in a SaaS model.

    1. psychonaut

      no, not really

      so how would this fail locally exactly?

      on a local pc....your pc might die for many reasons or you might get a virus assuming your policies are shit and you are an idiot. you might forget your password (aaargh twat!!) and not be able to reset it because you dont have anyone that can use utilman / cmd swapover or a linux disk to reset it.

      the worst that could happen would be for you to go out and buy another pc. takes, what, an hour? or rebuild your pc...then bung your dvd in and install it. or if you are more technically minded, fix the one you have. so a new pc costs money, but how much are you losing in revenue whilst it is down?

      as its been said before, if you leave all your IT to someone else who will employ god knows who to look after your "kit" what do you expect? its like going to PC World to get advice....guess who you are dealing with? someone who tries to sell you windows 8 and norton because the margins are high or because they cant sell you anything else.

      they wont ask you what you plan to do with the pc, understand that actually, a samsung 840 pro ssd and 8gb of ram and even a g2120 (£30) cost very little now and will kick the arse out of an i7 and a sata disk - they are just flogging their stuff to you. they dont care. you are one many. if they lose you as a customer, its not important. if they lose your data, so what? you get pissed, have your business down for hours or days and then go somewhere else. at this stage, you have already let your IT guys go.

      even the big boys like amazon and MS cant get the failover right - they wouldnt have outages otherwise, for whatever reason i worked for a DR company (adam associates/global continuity) 18 years ago that worked on failover of servers back in NT days....thats 20 years ago...we invented a thing called double take that was revolutionary but didnt really work properly at the time (cant comment on what it s like now though, hopefully much better) i cant believe that the system they knocked up at time doesnt now work flawlessly. it kinda worked back then. but now? why doesn't it just fucking work? server clusters were just becoming fashionable then - its now 20 years on. cloud promises redundant immediate failover systems but it KEEPS going wrong...why is this?

      because they are a bunch of clunts. simple. they dont care about you as a customer because you are one of many.

  15. psychonaut

    oops

    ran out of edit time....a few mistakes in the last post and a few beers here...really though, how can a comany with 10 of thousands of servers all supposed to be redundant and failover not work properly?

    "for whatever reason i worked for a DR company (adam associates/global continuity) 18 years ago that worked on failover of servers back in NT days....thats 20 years ago..."

    should read

    "for whatever reason. i worked for a DR company (adam associates/global continuity) 18 years ago that worked on failover of servers back in NT days....thats 18 years ago..."

  16. razorfishsl

    All part of them 'controlling' piracy…..

    Altium are heading that way, Microsoft with office 360 ( the number of days it does not work cheekily encoded in the name)

    Rather Ironic, when pirate software costs them money they cry, but when they fail causing tens of millions in lost productivity all over the world , then its "go read the licensing terms and swivel on this"

  17. smartypants

    I will probably be torched as a heretic, but here goes...

    'Cloud' is very in these days, but it's largely meaningless.

    What has happened is that some central system has gone tits-up.

    Since the earliest days of computing, the 'eggs' have been placed in one central basket. We didn't even get round to having actual computers on desks until decades after the computing revolution began. The only novelty about 'cloud systems' is that the owner of the equipment may not be you, and it's easier to alter utilisation patterns to suit load, but Adobe are hardly the first company to have a central service upon which many people rely and which ought to be designed and managed in such a way to avoid This Sort Of Thing (tm).

    Leaving aside the business pros and cons of having a subscription model rather than an upgrade model (and that is a business issue, not a technology issue), Adobe's business relied on central systems before subscription and it will afterwards, as will hospitals, banks, the Government, scientific institutes - the whole economy. This episode simply underlines the importance of reliability of a central system. It doesn't invalidate the model in any way, not even for software licensing.

    The issue they should concentrate on is how things failed, what to do about it to meet SLAs (if they have such a thing!), and perhaps a better contingency plan for things going tits-up next time.

    As we're talking about software licensing and not air traffic control, a very simple contingency plan could have been simply to allow everyone to use the software for free while the system was in 'degraded' mode. It wouldn't be difficult to do.

    For better or worse - and I accept that many people find it worse - Adobe have restructured their business so that they are not reliant on spiky cashflow that comes from occasional upgrade patterns of purchasing. They could have stuck to physical installed licences to drive that business model, but in this instance, they've used an online strategy, for obvious reasons. The online strategy is not the thing that is broken. You may not like the business model, but the thing that is broken here is merely the implementation, and they are not exactly the first to suggest a lot of people rely on a central service which ought not to go wrong...

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: I will probably be torched as a heretic, but here goes...

      Well argued, Mr Pants. My point, clumsily made, was that if the model cannot be reliably enabled, this itself invalidates the model. A model that's perfect in theory only is no good to me.

  18. HKmk23

    Head in the clouds

    Cloud computing is another bean counters scam to provide the users with dumb terminals. You all know the two major companies who advocate dumb terminals....well, they are at it again.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cloud Computing vs. Trusted Computing

    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

    How many more Adobe like meltdowns will it take before executives get the message that we don't all want their favourite business model? How many twitter protests before they give us shrink wrapped software back again? Tech executives think there's no going back. But if enough protest things can happen....

    There are so many horrible things that can go wrong with the CloudFog model, and this is just one example. Adobe will fix this and screw up again just like last year. Why? Because we don't live in an era of true human+system reliability, never mind hack-proof, constant net access. The only people who do reside in the boardrooms of the tech companies, and they want everything kept on their servers, close to base, under their total control.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cloud Computing vs. Trusted Computing

      How about NOT FOR A DECADE OR TWO? They've basically cornered the market and are basically telling everyone, "Our way or the highway," but since everyone needs Adobe software to be of substance, it's kinda hard to go the highway. There are no real substitutes for most all the Adobe products on the market: only Photoshop can do all thosee exclusive Photoshop plugins, anything comparable to Premiere or After Effects probably treads into professional territory, and you MIGHT be able to pull off an older version of PDF but that means no bells and whistles that clients demand. Plus Adobe's got a bunch of active patents that mean any attempt to seriously compete with them mean lawsuits up the wazoo for the duration.

      In essence, Adobe's become the guerillas in control of the only clean well in the village. What options do you have at this point?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cloud Computing vs. Trusted Computing

        Upvoted. But not giving up. Other digital companies such as Epic take a more relaxed approach. Look at UDK for example. They do good business but without strangling their customers....

  20. Brandy
    FAIL

    Saaaaaarm

    Hells yeah this is good

  21. EveningStarNM

    Rants vs. Reporting and Analysis

    DISCLAIMER: I am opposed to using cloud services -- for many reasons -- when suitable local solutions are available. If a local solution is not available, I would prefer to develop one if to do so can be cost-effective.

    Has anyone noticed that this "article" is nothing more than a rant? It is virtually bereft of information and only vaguely -- and accidentally -- touches on one or two aspects of the problems with cloud computing. While reliability certainly is a factor, one company's failure to maintain reliable service is not enough reason to abandon the cloud. Furthermore, the author sheds almost no light on this particular incident and talks exclusively about his personal experience.

    One hopes for a more sober discussion of the benefits and risks associated with cloud computing.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Rants vs. Reporting and Analysis

      But this IS the "Something for the Weekend" column.

      The Daily Mail has Moms in Rage, we have Dabbs'

    2. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: Rants vs. Reporting and Analysis

      It's a new paradigm, you know. RaaS aka "Rant as a service". Delivered to us every Friday (occasional hiccups notwithstanding), just before pub'o'clock. And quite a popular service it is.

      Stop whining and get on with the times.

  22. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    SHOCK News. El Reg hack suffers major pacifier ejection event.

    Ahhhhhh.

    Diddummms.

  23. vmcreator

    Stop it, you will make Microsoft cry next

  24. cyberelf
    FAIL

    Cloud computing is shite

    I've always thought Cloud computing was overhyped ..

  25. oiseau

    Re: cloud computing is shite

    Indeed it is.

    Anyone out there actually surprised?

    Really?

    I'm certainly not a IT visionary or expert of any sort, just a long time user (35+ yrs.) of computer tech.

    But the first time I read about this cloud stuff I immediately realised that anyone heading for it and all the marketing hooplah it promised would eventually set themselves up for a substantial fall.

    The usual IT industry suspects want all of us there and in time it will happen, with everyone using a PC with a OS and applications under their thumb, slaves to the highly lucrative OS, apps, etc. as a service model envisioned by their marketing drones.

    Why?

    Because when it comes to simple and basic common sense people have the stupid tendency to think with their pockets and not their brains. Simple as that.

    And by the time they realise they have botched it, it's too damn late.

    I strongly believe that this cloud stuff must be stopped and I'm not holding my breath but ...

    Cloud computing?

    Me?

    Not till hell freezes over, twice over.

    Cheers.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A rant....

    WTF is wrong with a sodding desktop machine? We have just gone over to a Citrix environment where our arrow keys suddenly get transposed and images disappear from presentation material, accompanied with pauses in the movement of the mouse, crap desktop rendering and general satellite delays in everything that we do? Not being allowed to have anything on our desktops and the inconvenience that causes, reduced storage for stuff we need and the further inconvenience of having to shift stuff around from the UK to Germany to open the sodding thing. If the pipe goes down, then the whole organisation is off-line.

    Piss-farting about moving files and opening them on a VM is a pain in the arse. It is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea that mongs at higher levels (CEO) like because it gives them autonomy and "visibility" but us poor sods down the corporate food chain have to put up with.

    It's utter bollocks. Stop it now. It might work for huge corporations, but it doesn't work in an SME environment.

  27. psychonaut

    SME's are the coal face

    couldnt agree more with the last post....i work mainly with SME's...small budget but a day down for an SME is a huge problem. sme for me is 1 to 10 people. when you first encounter them, they havent a clue about IT. they have their business and do email and sage and documents and maybe some other stuff. they dont back up. they have norton installed from the computer they bought at pc world. now we are going to let them buy pc's as a service form some cock whose entire "support" is based on magical pixies who work round the clock from some 3rd world country, who cant do IT let alone speak english? imagine if talk talk were doing your IT...i mean holy shit!!

    local IT engineer....

    broadband down - no prob, lets use 3g off your phone, or if they have a bigger budget, it will fail over onto the 3g from the router if they've paid for a decent router.

    pc fails...well, you can use someone elses if its critical...shove them off their pc, install software if necessary and do mission critical stuff on it whilst i fix yours, or simply build a new machine - few hours.

    server fails....worst case we can rebuild it...might take a good few hours though.

    if they are on a cloud infrastructure (windows as a service, db as a service, in fact anything as a service) and it fails noone can fix it except the cloud provider - lets say its fasthosts level of support...could be weeks. call them up...hello, my name is johnny (actually rapesh in bangalore) , how can i help?

    oh.....fuck!

    heres the future guys - its not bright and it sure as shit aint orange.

  28. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Er......

    So you're screaming about cloud because you lost your login service? Wow, like that has NEVER happened in UNIX environments when NIS goes tits up, or Windoze environments when AD barfs,or any environment when your core switches propagates a duff routing table. Seriously, I guess it's because you're one of those fragile creative types, but please do get a sense of perspective.

  29. Bakana

    Thise Scam is not the scam you Think it is ...

    The Cloud Scam isn't really about the essential flaw in the concept.

    The actual Scam is in believeing that Marketing will keep that promise Not to "Snoop" on your data. There's Gold in them thar Bytes and they Will go data mining for it.

    Not that they will be using it for silly things like blackmail.

    The Big Bucks are in things like Marketing Profiles sold to Other Corporations, the occasional shot at a little bit of Insider Trading and the ability to know that a woman might be Pregnant before she even buys the Test Kit. (We're looking at You, Target.)

  30. OzBob

    Now if you managed the components of the Cloud yourself

    but leased them from a provider, you could be in control of the problem and correct it quicker. So "Cloud as a Service, as a Service". (Should I stick a "quasi" in there?)

  31. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Blame Idiots, not the Cloud

    The problem here was to do with the database.

    Guess what? Databases have been falling over since about a minute after the first one was created.

    Sure, this particular database wouldn't have existed in the old days, but in general if you don't know much about IT it's better to have experts keep everything running than try to do it yourself.

    The problem was not that SaaS is inherently dodgy, it's that Adobe seem to have employed idiots rather than experts.

    1. Marcus Fil

      Re: Blame Idiots, not the Cloud

      Everyone employs idiots - we all do idiotic things at inappropriate times. The problem with the Cloud model is the "force multiplying" effect it has on idiotic actions. One cock up, a million unwanted pregnancies. If I spill coffee on my laptop its me who is suffering a single local consequence - if Adobe mis-fiddle with their authentication database it is thousands around the world suddenly, instantly, being unproductive. Worse yet, Adobe are charging you, the lucky customer, on monthly basis to be put in 'that' position. Now I know Universal and Busch Gardens charge people to be placed in seeming peril and a good slug of adrenalin it is too. However, there is enough added adrenalin in running a business without the top-up of outsourcing to idiots beyond your immediate control. Me, I trust Adobe, or indeed any other Cloud based service, about as far as I can piss. When the T&Cs say we get a £1 a second for unavailability and get to watch the public execution of the hapless minion responsible I may reconsider.

  32. Al fazed
    Pint

    Marvelous stuff

    Brilliant sir, a breath of sanity on Monday morning.

    That first paragraph brought tears of joy to my eyes. It's just what I've been trying to get across to Users (who ask) for a while, but have been invariabley outnumbered by Techies in pompous smirk mode.

    Now there are two of us.

    Thank you Ali Star

    ALF

  33. This post has been deleted by its author

  34. John 104

    Cloud Computing Is Here To Stay.

    Why? Because that is where big companies and small are putting their money. If you want a slice of that money, you had better be ready to play the game. Executives think it is nifty because they fall for marketing BS. Executives are the ones that let you keep your job.

    You have two options.

    Become an integrator of said systems and make them work for your current employer.

    Become an engineer for a company that provides cloud computing services.

    Well, technically you have 3, do neither and find yourself in the bread line in 5 years because your skills have become irrelevant.

    Personally, I am with most of the posters here, and don't put anything I value in the cloud. Come to think if it, I don't put a thing out there. I'd rather have my data on my systems. That being said, my last two jobs have been with one small and one large [software company in Redmond] SaaS providers.

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