Glitch in Nokia’s cloud-based Ovi service destroys 3 weeks of users’ updates: Mobile device maker ‘incredibly sorry,’ incident highlights potential dangers of cloud computing

Nokia Corp. begged for forgiveness from consumers after its new cloud-based service broke down.
The Finnish manufacturer – which is striving to evolve into a mobile Internet services company – said its Contacts for Ovi offering shut down after a cooler failed, causing a server to crash. The service was down for several hours Thursday and – more importantly – all customer updates for the past three weeks were lost.
“Words can’t explain how incredibly sorry we are for the inconvenience,” wrote Kristian Luoma, contact manager for Contacts on Ovi, on the company’s blog. “We’re sorry for the lost contacts in your phonebooks. We’re sorry that the profile pictures you love, and we love too are gone. Nothing can make this right, we know, but we’re hoping that you can forgive us and give another chance to give you good service.”
The failure underscored the dangers of offering a cloud-based service for personal information, which has become a white-hot space as Apple, Microsoft and others woo consumers by acting as a kind of storage locker for consumers’ data. And Nokia’s mea culpa contrasted with the reaction of Apple, which initially stayed mum before apologizing to consumers when its MobileMe stumbled out of the gate last summer.
Unlike MobileMe, a $99-a-year offering, Contacts for Ovi is a free service for Nokia users and is in beta. Microsoft Corp. said it will disclose details on its upcoming cloud service next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.