I'm not sure that I agree, or at least not entirely, that it's simply the execution that is the problem with cloud-based services relying on cloud-based infrastructure. It's the silver thread argument (forgive me for lapsing into AD&D terminology): the idea that there is always some base level of reality that you are dependent on, however many layers of abstraction you put in between it and your service. Wainewright points out arrogance that has, in his view, kept Amazon from further bullet-proofing its services and providing better feedback on them:

"We have not found it necessary to offer any kind of formal guarantee in this regard. What works best is to realize that our interests are aligned with the interests of our developers - if the service is not running then their sites are not running, and no transactions are occurring. Clearly, this is bad, and we do all that we can to make sure that it doesn't happen."

In other words, 'If you're down, we're down, so trust us to stay up - after all, if you can't trust Amazon, who can you trust?'

I'm not sure it's arrogance, though; it's really about core competencies. Amazon, for all their expertise with these systems, is still really an e-commerce company. Clearly they have been able to develop an infrastructure that suits their operations with no downtime, but unless you are an e-commerce company as well, using their storefront, there really isn't any reason to think they have built a better infrastructure for your needs than you might build yourself.

I don't disagree that eventually the industry will move toward cloud on cloud services... there are too many efficiencies in the approach to discount it, particularly considering how minor these glitches really have been. Honestly, haven't you seen far worse from in-house IT services? But I do think that it will take cloud service providers who are developing those applications as their core competency, not simply as an outgrowth of whatever other business they are in which they have had to develop them for, before it can happen reliably. It's not clear yet who those providers might be... if not Amazon, perhaps EMC? Nirvanix? Time will tell. Until then, expect a lot of companies who are serious about success to continue building out their own ground-level infrastructure to support it.