<p>As the adoption of cloud computing continues to rise, and customers demand 24/7 access to their services and data, reliability remains a challenge for cloud service providers everywhere. As I said in the recent <a href="/b/trustworthycomputing/archive/2012/06/05/cloud-fundamentals-video-series-reliability-in-the-cloud.aspx">Cloud Fundamentals video on reliability</a>, it’s not a matter of <i>if</i> an outage will occur; it’s strictly a matter of <i>when</i>. This means it’s critical for organizations to understand how best to design and deliver reliable cloud services. Microsoft manages a cloud-based infrastructure supporting more than 200 services, 1 billion customers, and 20 million businesses in more than 76 markets worldwide. So we understand what it takes to build and deliver highly-reliable cloud platforms, solutions, and services that are secure and private.</p>