Online Public Relations Thoughts

 When computer cloud services become essential, any failure is a sensitive PR issue for the providers.  Consider Microsoft's cloud service outages for the past week.  Those dependent on the software company can't do something else while it wrangles its wide area network over changes that have gone bad.  The internet has become central to the workings of business and individuals.  It is no longer a good thing but a necessary and fundamental tool.  Hence, cloud-service companies like Microsoft and Amazon have the onus of maintaining uptime close to 100 percent.  It would not be surprising if regulators place rules on cloud providers that stipulate service terms.  As the Microsoft outages reveal, it is difficult to know what changes to software and hardware will go bad.  It is far more complicated than an electrical distribution system, but that is no excuse, or won't be before long.