Recent Cloud Outages Reinforce the Need for Small Business Backups

A Christmas Eve glitch traced to Amazon.com Inc. that shut down Netflix for users from Canada to South America highlights the risks that companies take when they move their operations to the cloud.

Amazon’s latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.

“Netflix and other organizations which rely on [cloud services] will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks,” said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.

Black Enterprise published an article on steps your business should take to minimize your risk during a cloud outage.

Black Enterprise reader named Ellis J. Still added the comment “this is why we have multiple back-ups of back-ups of everything… while in today’s technical climate it may be in vogue to utilize third party services, you have no control over when things go bad. Having a Plan “B” is essential.”