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This article from IT News highlights the massive pitfalls associated with running your business on the grid when Amazons EC2 went offline over the Easter weekend.  We say grid as "the cloud" is way too wank for us.  We're not saying that you shouldn't do stuff on the grid - we are just saying make sure you have contingencies.

1. Have copies of your data in several places such as at home or in the office on physical drives either in your computer or next to it
2. Be aware that your connection to the internet can be interrupted for many different reasons which means you may be disconnected from the grid for extended periods
3. Know where your data physically is on the grid - is it the US, Aus or any number of Asian countries
4. Ideally your grid providor should be located phisically in your city so if the worst comes to the worst - you can actually go onsite to access your data

The full article can be found here:-

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/255549,growing-pains-amazon-ec2-suffers-huge-outage.aspx/0

Given Amazons treatment of Wikileaks - it couldn't happen to a nicer host.