Reports that SwissDisk, the US cloud storage service provider has been hit by a data access outage, indicates that - even with a high level of service uptime - cloud data storage options have yet to reach the maturity of more conventional technology, says Origin Storage.

“In the wake of its cloud storage outage, SwissDisk has rolled out the big guns and, after outsourcing to a major company, claims it can now achieve 99.95 uptime for its customers,” said Andy Cordial, managing director of the secure data storage systems specialist.

“If you get your calculator out, however, that still means that customers will have to endure outage periods of almost four and a half hours a year when they can’t get at their data,” he added.

According to Cordial, the same rules that predict the propensity for a slice of toast landing butter side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet it lands on, applies to this level of service uptime.

You can, he says, bet the last coin in your pocket that an outage will occur just as the CEO is about to make a key presentation to a set of investors, or wants to access his/her mailbox for a piece of time-critical information.

The bottom line to this incident is that, even with its new data storage options in place, SwissDisk’s service level agreements are an admission that cloud computing can never be as reliable as local storage options,

The cloud, he explained, has finite limitations when it comes to real-world access to data, whereas secure local storage - with locally managed backup options - is still the safest form of data retention.

“Cloud computing is a powerful offering in terms of cost savings, but the bottom line is that secure local storage remains the best option for organisations - regardless of the media hype that surrounds the cloud,” he said,