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What happens to all the data if a big cloud provider goes under? They must give their clients time to move the data, no?

by theklub 12y ago

sososoko 12y ago
they will give time, e.g Ubuntu One file services closed shop and gave some time and even free migration services to another provider.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  This was because the company behind Ubuntu (Canonical) shut down the service, they didn't go under themselves. If the cloud infrastrucure is Box's, and they cannot pay the maintenance fees anymore, I would start seriously worrying. In a way, committing to a company whose main business is cloud storage gives you more guarantees they won't shut down the service out of the blue (since it's their only, or main, source of revenue), while committing to a big company with their eggs in more baskets (MS, Google) gives you more guarantees that if they shut down the service you'll be given some time to react.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Is there insurance coverage for this sort of thing? "In case Company X goes under, Insurance Company Y will pay $Z to cover hosting costs for AA months so that customers can download their data"
pjc50 12y ago
It's sold to the highest bidder like everything else. Not quite the same, but if you count Megaupload as a cloud storage provider, it's possible for data to be seized and held inaccessible for years. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/dotcom-data-deletion http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/dotcom-data-d...
dagw 12y ago
Possibly, possibly not, depends on the circumstances. The real thing to remember is that Box, Dropbox etc. aren't a replacement for backups and if them shutting down without warning tomorrow means you lose data then you are Doing It Wrong.
jpmattia 12y ago
> They must give their clients time to move the data, no? And if they don't and the data is cut off (destroyed, etc), what recourse would the clients have?
anc84 12y ago
They post about what an incredible journey it has been with you, their beloved user, in their unlimited-service-for-ever and that you will have 7 days to grab your data from their 10 MBit/s funnel before it is deleted forever. See http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ for some inspiration. The cloud/butt is not a place to store your data without having everything backed up locally. Look at a random ToS, they all(?) can terminate your service in an instant for zero reasons.
Someone 12y ago
From what I understand, if a company truly goes into liquidation (as opposed to e.g. Chapter 11, which is like a state of emergency for businesses) it ceases to exist, so it cannot have any obligations (or, for that matter, possessions) anymore. The trustee appointed to wind down the business will/should try and divide whatever is left as fair as possible. What that means for intangibles such as "your data that is in their data center that is powered down because they didn't pay the bills" or even "that is on the disks that were repossessed by the company that leased them to them" will depend on lots of factors. Maybe some company turns up who wants to continue the business. Such a buyer likely will want to keep existing customers, and therefore will try and keep the data of the customers online. Alternatively, if it is clear nobody wants to continue the business, and contracts do not put a price on losing customer data while in liquidation, why would the trustee spend money on keeping a data center running? In practice, the answer to that question likely is "because subsequent lawsuits will cost more than keeping the data center running does". Therefore, one can hope such companies do not truly go under but close down in more or less orderly fashion: they go into cheaper 11, find a 'partner' who buys their storage business and migrates the data into their centers, leaving an almost empty shell that can go reinvent itself, or linger for years on (for example, reading Wikipedia, SCO has been in such a zombie-like state for years)

What happens to all the data if a big cloud provider goes under? They must give their clients time to move the data, no?

by theklub 12y ago

What happens to all the data if a big cloud provider goes under? They must give their clients time to move the data, no?

sososoko 12y ago

they will give time, e.g Ubuntu One file services closed shop and gave some time and even free migration services to another provider.

Kurtz79 12y ago
This was because the company behind Ubuntu (Canonical) shut down the service, they didn't go under themselves. If the cloud infrastrucure is Box's, and they cannot pay the maintenance fees anymore, I would start seriously worrying. In a way, committing to a company whose main business is cloud storage gives you more guarantees they won't shut down the service out of the blue (since it's their only, or main, source of revenue), while committing to a big company with their eggs in more baskets (MS, Google) gives you more guarantees that if they shut down the service you'll be given some time to react.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Is there insurance coverage for this sort of thing? "In case Company X goes under, Insurance Company Y will pay $Z to cover hosting costs for AA months so that customers can download their data"

pjc50 12y ago

It's sold to the highest bidder like everything else. Not quite the same, but if you count Megaupload as a cloud storage provider, it's possible for data to be seized and held inaccessible for years. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/dotcom-data-deletion http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/dotcom-data-d...

dagw 12y ago

Possibly, possibly not, depends on the circumstances. The real thing to remember is that Box, Dropbox etc. aren't a replacement for backups and if them shutting down without warning tomorrow means you lose data then you are Doing It Wrong.

jpmattia 12y ago

> They must give their clients time to move the data, no? And if they don't and the data is cut off (destroyed, etc), what recourse would the clients have?

anc84 12y ago

They post about what an incredible journey it has been with you, their beloved user, in their unlimited-service-for-ever and that you will have 7 days to grab your data from their 10 MBit/s funnel before it is deleted forever. See http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ for some inspiration. The cloud/butt is not a place to store your data without having everything backed up locally. Look at a random ToS, they all(?) can terminate your service in an instant for zero reasons.

Someone 12y ago

From what I understand, if a company truly goes into liquidation (as opposed to e.g. Chapter 11, which is like a state of emergency for businesses) it ceases to exist, so it cannot have any obligations (or, for that matter, possessions) anymore. The trustee appointed to wind down the business will/should try and divide whatever is left as fair as possible. What that means for intangibles such as "your data that is in their data center that is powered down because they didn't pay the bills" or even "that is on the disks that were repossessed by the company that leased them to them" will depend on lots of factors. Maybe some company turns up who wants to continue the business. Such a buyer likely will want to keep existing customers, and therefore will try and keep the data of the customers online. Alternatively, if it is clear nobody wants to continue the business, and contracts do not put a price on losing customer data while in liquidation, why would the trustee spend money on keeping a data center running? In practice, the answer to that question likely is "because subsequent lawsuits will cost more than keeping the data center running does". Therefore, one can hope such companies do not truly go under but close down in more or less orderly fashion: they go into cheaper 11, find a 'partner' who buys their storage business and migrates the data into their centers, leaving an almost empty shell that can go reinvent itself, or linger for years on (for example, reading Wikipedia, SCO has been in such a zombie-like state for years)