Protect Customer Data, Reputation With Cross-Cloud Migration

Lee Exall, managing partner of Capital Continuity.
Lee Exall, managing partner of Capital Continuity.

It didn’t take long to get 2015’s first headline about a major cloud outage. This time it was from Verizon, and the outage was planned, a system upgrade that could have put the provider’s services out of commission for 48 hours in early January.

But even if they didn’t like it, at least Verizon customers had a warning that the outage was coming. That wasn’t the case for users of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services at the end of last year.

That outage, it turns out, was caused by human error. Something went sideways during an upgrade, making websites for thousands of companies all over the world unavailable and knocking some of Microsoft’s most popular services offline.

But cloud outages should not just be an external concern. As many companies move critical applications and IT infrastructure into the cloud, an outage can mean business not getting done, literally. Consistent or prolonged unavailability of applications can cause frustration that leads to anger that leads to once-happy employees soon being employees elsewhere.

That’s why a rapid response is critical for safeguarding a company’s people, brand and assets, and it’s going to be up to Disaster Recovery as a Service providers to make sure that swift action is possible.

NEXT: Your Brand's Reputation Is Taking A Hit