---
title: "Comment of the Day: Hey You, Back Up My Cloud!"
date: 2008-02-18
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2008"
    url: "/tag/2008.md"
---

# Comment of the Day: Hey You, Back Up My Cloud!

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148im_/http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/comments_comp_gold_star.jpg)We have two prize winners to announce, for yesterday and today. Our 7th and 8th daily [Comments Competition](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rww_comments_competition.php) winners come from two different posts. The first is one from [Reaching for the Sky Through The Compute Clouds](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reaching_for_the_sky_through_compute_clouds.php). It came from martin english, who [wrote that](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reaching_for_the_sky_through_compute_clouds.php#comment-47073) companies still need “backup clouds”, even if they use Amazon’s clouds. Congratulations Martin, you’ve won a $30 Amazon voucher, courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their [Amazon WishList Widget](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.adaptiveblue.com/widgets_auto.html?section=amz&name=Your%20Wish%20List).

Our second winner is kayvaan, for [a comment](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_birth_of_the_political_long_tail.php#comment-47066) on our post [The Birth of the Political Long Tail](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_birth_of_the_political_long_tail.php). Congrats kayvaan, you also win an Amazon voucher!

Here is martin’s cloud comment:

> ![](https://web.archive.org/web/20090104145148im_/http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/sky.jpg)“The “common sense solution” is simple ‘black boxes’ with the minimum of linkages. In short, less to go wrong. But things will still go wrong, so allow for backup servers / sites / clouds (see how it works ? if you us server based computing, you need a backup server; if you use cloud based computing, you need a backup cloud…). Not only must these backup clouds be ‘safe’, they must be available.
> 
> The implication, for 100% uptime (and true vendor independence), is that your service needs to be able to run on AWS and EMC and..
> 
> This will cost $$ (developer time if nothing else). Someone (i.e the customer) needs to decide how far doen the route you go before the spend outweighs the value.”

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/backup_clouds.php))*