Intuit crash highlights potential problems for cloud computing

Contributed by Roumiana Deltcheva (Thursday, June 24, 2010) | Category : Email security

Recently, more than 300,000 customers of Intuit, a software developer specializing in business applications, were disconnected from the company's services for almost two days after it experienced an outage, InformationWeek reports.

The disruption reportedly took place when a routine maintenance procedure triggered a massive powerful failure that affected the company's primary and backup servers.

Despite apologies from Intuit's president and chief executive Brad Smith, who stated "there is simply no excuse for having such a negative impact on [our customers]," the crash highlights the dangers companies face when adopting cloud computing services. When relying on a managed network, companies are susceptible to the failures of their providers.

While the trend among many U.S. business sectors is toward cloud computing adoption, certain industries are still wary of these dangers and have stayed away. According to a recent survey from CompTIA, only 14 percent of responding law firms are currently in the cloud. Also, with many companies among all business sectors moving their email archiving into the cloud, security and functionality of the service has taken on greater importance.