April 21, 2011- a day that will live in infamy.  The amazon cloud has failed.  It has been interesting to see all the buzz over the last few years focusing on the “cloud.”  Business continuity, reliability, file storage, and security have all been touted as the primary reasons to switch to cloud computing.  Today, numerous sites including reddit.com, foursquare, and hootsuite are all offline… because of the Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud.  I was, and am, a big supporter of switching to cloud computing for all of the for-mentioned reasons.  I see true value in the cloud for data storage and hosting. I have experienced Data loss due to hard drive failure, viruses, or user failure too many times to not appreciate what the cloud has to offer.  I also want to find a reliable cloud option for data storage including my music, videos, photos, and important files.  Unfortunately, I feel the price for cloud storage is still substantial enough for me to avoid a cloud option for the time being.    I am interested to see the fallout for both amazon and other business touting cloud services.  I think this outage will be a temporary blackeye for a service that definitely needs to be appreciated and embraced.