When a business utilizes cloud services, they expect their data to be secure. When a cloud service provider, like Amazon, experiences an outage, it can be scary to those that use the service. Outages can lead to unsecured data, such as when Dropbox had their recent password issue.

Outages can also lead to loss of data, a major concern of all businesses. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud had outage issues twice in 2011 and these outages caused some of their clients to lose precious data. So, the big question remains – can cloud companies truly guarantee the safety of data?

Hefty Promises from an Established Company

One company that has been in the cloud business for six years says that it can. Joyent recently launched a new service called the Joyent Complete Cloud. According to Joyent, this service will provide clients with 99.99% uptime, compared to Amazon’s promise of 99.95%.

They also state that downtime will be so minimal, it will be measured in seconds and that no data will be lost. These are some pretty hefty promises for a cloud service provider to make. The company states that they will use a different “architecture” system than Amazon, which will make their service more reliable.

Joyent has also added various tools that will allow clients to understand exactly what is happening should an issue occur. For example, one feature allows users to view stats on the amount of time it takes information to go from point A to point B. This could prove to be a helpful feature that will ease many minds, should Joyent experience a slowdown in their service.

Clients will be able to “see” what is going on, rather than being left in the dark. Joyent claims they can accomplish their goals by taking advantage of local storage. Basically, they will take data and spread it out over local computers. This will keep the data safe and allow clients quick access.

New to the Game, But Ready to Play

Another cloud service provider that is new to the game, Nasuni, also plans on utilizing local storage. Nasuni plans to keep important data in local storage, while utilizing cloud storage for backups and other less essential data. Both companies believe that by keeping vital data “close to home”, businesses will feel more confident in utilizing cloud services. By no means have either company given up on the cloud – they have just decided to limit what goes to the cloud in order to protect their clients’ data.

While no one can say for 100% certain that data will not be lost, both of these companies appear to be onto something. The cloud is useful – no one can argue that point – however, it has its weak points, one of which is data loss. If cloud service providers can combat potential data loss, they will be a success.

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