Almost all of us rely on the cloud computing for some business applications. We expect that accessibility and uptime will remain at a higher level than we can achieve by providing the hosting service ourselves.

Yet a recent incident with Google Gmail brings to light a very troubling question about the cloud. When something goes terribly wrong – as it did for tens of thousands of Gmail subscribers – how could this affect your business?

This week, thanks to a bug in a storage software update, about 35,000 Gmail subscribers discovered that all of the information in their accounts had disappeared. From email messages and settings to contacts and chat histories, everything was gone.

According to Google, the information has not been deleted. Once the problem is solved, users’ data should be restored. Those customers still will have gone days without access to email, contacts and other information critical in their business and daily lives.

This makes the question come to life for all of us. What does the cost of downtime per application cost your business? In a hosted environment, there is a significantly greater potential for extended periods of downtime. This could affect major systems in your business, including email, portals, VoIP, CRM, ERP and more.

I’m not advocating that companies not use a hosted model for certain applications. But understanding the risks versus the rewards is important. Calculate the estimated amount of downtime per year under a hosted model versus an in-house model, and see what the dollars say for your company.