Following the global chaos caused by the recent CrowdStrike update failure, technology experts recommend that corporations get off the cloud.

Many FNN readers undoubtedly do not remember corporate computing before the internet, world wide web (WWW), and re-location of mission-critical corporate computing assets into the cloud.

So here's a quick explainer:

Before 'the cloud', corporations ran their applications on their own servers that they managed using something called an 'IT department'.

In 'the cloud', they outsourced all of this to third parties, paying by subscription for 'services' in exchange for 'simplicity' and reduced headcount.

The benefit before the cloud was that the point of failure was localized. If company X servers went down, company Y's servers would still function. Control of the 'fix' for any failures was also localized to the point of failure.

But in the world of the cloud all this common-sense has been lost as everything is inter-connected by a global operating system (the WWW) that was never designed to use for running mission-critical apps. But we insist on using it anyway.

Now we are paying the price for this nonsense and will continue to pay the price as the proliferation of cloud-based global systems become targets for evermore ingenious hackers bent on causing chaos - if not for money or political purposes then just for the sheer hell of it.

The Machine Stops anyone?