Bad week for cloud storage

Last week, we saw a good bit of rain falling on cloud storage’s parade. First there was another Amazon outage. Then it came to light that a cloud storage site called The Linkup (nee MediaMax) has completely failed, because of an apparent problem with data migration. At least that’s what it sounds like from their blog post about going out of business:

It was not possible to satisfactorily complete the move of files from MediaMax to The Linkup as we had expected, and as a result cannot offer a service that meets your expectations and our business requirements. This is a very disappointing outcome for us, and we know it has been a frustrating experience for many of our customers.

Maybe the owners of The Linkup could bounce back by taking Xdrive off AOL’s hands for the bargain price of $5 million and starting over.

Generally, I reserve judgment on the ultimate fate of cloud storage services. I know that online storage had a brief period of interest during the tech bubble but never went anywhere, and some believe this is more of the same. But I can be convinced, for now, that this time might be different. Small outfits such as The Linkup get trampled during the gold rush toward any new technology, and perhaps established service providers such as Amazon are going through growing pains. It’s still too early for these events to be anything other than a possible warning sign.

But things have sure looked ugly lately.