Cloud outages - Microsoft shows the way

There are many definitions for facepalm, but my favourite can be found in the brilliant Urban Dictionary as follows: "The act of dropping one's face / forehead into one's hand. Usually accompanied by a thunk or a cry of D'oh!" - And D'oh! could certainly be heard from the direction of IT security experts, along with that unmistakable 'thunk' sound, when last month, Microsoft allowed the Windows Azure cloud service to fail. I'm pretty sure that The Powers That Be at Microsoft will take umbrage at that description, but I'm also equally certain that's what happened when you look at the situation in the cold light of day.