Published at LXer:

Many in Health IT are moving to all over-the-web 'asp', software-as-service Electronic Medical Records services with total centralized control of data. John C. Dvoraksounds off a note of caution for such a trend with the recent Windows Genuine Advantage server outage which should be a wakeup call for those moving to 'online everything' applications:'What is often lost in individual analyses of how to proceed with your data-processing needs is the concept of"being at the mercy of a single company." It's something that you need to avoid at all costs. This Windows Genuine Disadvantage pothole should make all users rethink their strategies...' He further notes that this outage"happened to Microsoft, not to Alabama Joe's Server Farm and Toaster Repair." a note of caution indeed.

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I'm not so sure that the WGA fiasco is an indictment of SaaS as it is of Microsoft's inability to understand the concept of a single point of failure. Microsoft never seems to get that having a single point that brings down the entire system if it fails is a bad thing. Take the Windows Registry. Please. If Microsoft can't learn from that abomination that single point of failure is something to be avoided, then they may never learn.