Do you need help & advice with Cloud or Microsoft 365?
Following Microsoft’s recent outage, many business leaders are wondering if they should move away from cloud systems entirely. It’s a fair question, but it needs some context.
Think of large cloud platforms like utilities – water, electricity, or gas. They operate on a massive scale, with multiple backup systems, specialist teams, and billions invested in keeping them running and secure. While they do fail sometimes, it’s usually much less often than most businesses could manage running their own systems in-house.
The Real Risk Isn’t Cloud Failure
The actual problem isn’t that cloud services go down. The real issue is when a business can’t function for even a single day without email or shared systems. If that’s your situation, the problem isn’t the cloud itself, but a lack of basic planning for unexpected downtime.
Key Takeaways
- Cloud outages are a normal part of technology. What really matters is having a plan for how your business will operate when systems are temporarily unavailable.
Why In-House Isn’t Always Better
I remember supporting Microsoft Exchange servers years ago, and believe me, they went wrong a lot more often than these large-scale cloud services do. It seems pretty obvious that something managed at a utility scale, with huge investment in technology and fail-safes, is going to be more reliable.
These companies spend billions on resilience and security. When things do go wrong, like the recent outage, it’s just part of the nature of technology. As tech gets older and more established, like electricity or water services in Europe, major outages become very rare. Cloud tech is newer, so it’s going to have more hiccups, unfortunately. That’s just how it is.
Planning For The Worst
What’s important is building this reality into your day-to-day planning. If your business grinds to a halt because nobody can access email for a day, and it’s costing you a fortune, you need a backup plan. This doesn’t have to be complicated.
We all have smartphones, and there are billions of different technologies we could use. Even just having a system where people can call each other to report issues could be a lifesaver if your phones are still working. The point is, just because the cloud breaks doesn’t mean doing it yourself will be any better. In fact, it will likely be worse.
So, before you think about ditching the cloud, consider your business continuity plan. How will you keep things running when the unexpected happens?
