We can safely agree that Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. On the contrary, the trend will grow swiftly as new adopters enter the fray on a daily basis. The boon of benefits surrounding Cloud platforms is simply too attractive to ignore. Among the perks are increased flexibility, lower costs and improved efficiency.

However, as e-tailer giant Amazon has recently exhibited – not once, but twice – in the past few weeks, the Cloud is not quiet yet failure-proof by any means. For an enterprise operating in the Cloud, the importance of stability extends not just throughout the business, but well into many of their clients’ businesses as well.

With so much riding on the solvency of the platform, Cloud failures are, in many perspectives, unacceptable. This is especially true considering that one of the Cloud’s biggest selling points is resilience and redundancy. Sadly, there has been plenty of downtime in the Cloud over the years.

How much downtime specifically? The International Working Group on Cloud Computing Resiliency has the answer. The IWGCR published a report last month detailing the severity of Cloud failures over the past 5 years.

Since 2007, 13 of the most prominent Cloud platforms have endured an estimated 568 hours of downtime according to the report. The estimated price tag for all of that downtime collectively sits at about $71.7 million. That’s a drain of a little over $2,000 per minute!

Few CEOs would willingly jump into a platform with such grossly detrimental downtime, which is abysmal compared to the typically desired 99.999% uptime expectations. The sobering data from the IWGCR report represents a decided and desperate need for quickly actionable solutions.

The problem isn’t an absence of solutions, but rather a minor disconnect between a new architecture (The Cloud) and a time-tested resource by which many of the Cloud failures could have been prevented: A managed IT services partnership.

As more enterprises build more sophisticated Cloud systems, capable of more than the early-adopter applications such as secure file sharing, the stakes go up and the need for IT support grows exponentially. 

Most CIOs are well aware of the maintenance, management and contingency planning required to run a successful and stable Cloud infrastructure. Furthermore; the larger the system is, the greater the need for IT management.

In response to the increased demand for Cloud support, many IT providers are developing strategies to aid companies – both in the migration process and beyond – to bolster a platform unexpectedly plagued by what amounts to unacceptable downtime. Smart CEOs will take advantage of the safety net, as the savings from outsourcing IT is sure to outweigh the $35-per-second losses attributed to the Cloud’s poor track record thus far.