The sudden rise in network outages across different business platforms, including Google, Microsoft, Zoom, and CenturyLink, has affected millions of users and caused financial consequences. What can companies do to prevent service disruptions and maintain a positive brand reputation?
An internet or network outage causes a rippling effect on enterprises and has a significant financial impact. According to a study by Opengear, 38% of U.S. firms lose more than $1 million due to network outages in a year. The study also reveals that 41% of U.S. companies believe network outages to have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction. It has a negative effect on brand reputation and company revenue. Therefore, it is imperative that CIOs and CTOs strategize to build a resilient system and take measures to avoid outages. Let’s look at the major outages of 2020 and how companies can prevent service disruptions.
Major Outages That Occurred in 2020
Google — August 20, 2020 and September 24, 2020
On August 20, 2020, at 00:40 AM EDT, Google Services suffered a global outage for several hours. As a result, more than a million G Suite users faced issues with Gmail, Google Drive, Google Chat, Google Meet, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Keep, and Google Voice. The service disruption affected most parts of the world, including Japan, Singapore, India, Europe, parts of the U.S, China, Southeast & the Gulf, and Australia. Google managed to restore its services only after six hours and did not explain the cause of the outage.
Before this, Google Drive had encountered an hour-long outage on January 27, 2020. According to DowndetectorOpens a new window , at 12:40 PM EDT, close to 24,000 users were affected across the U.S., Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the U.K. By 2:24 PM EDT, Google had managed to resolve the issue.
Much recently, on September 24, 2020, around 9:30 PM EDT, Google services such as Google, YouTube, Google Docs were disrupted. However, the issue was resolvedOpens a new window by 10:07 PM EDT. Urz Hölzle, the SVP for Technical Infrastructure at Google, saidOpens a new window , “A pool of servers that route traffic to application backends crashed, and users on that particular pool experienced the outage.â€
Zoom — August 24, 2020
On August 24, 2020, at 8:30 AM EDT, Zoom experienced major outages across the U.S and the U.K, affecting businesses and educational institutes. Zoom managed to contain the issue by 1:10 PM EDT but didn’t reveal the cause of the disruption. Before this, on March 20, 2020, Zoom users reported an outageOpens a new window , where users couldn’t access Zoom services or make calls.Â
Slack — August 25, 2020
On August 25, 2020, communication and collaboration company, Slack, suffered a service outage that affected users in the U.K. and western and southern Europe. Slack users faced troubles with files, messages, and connecting to Slack. The company explained that the outage was due to significant issues in some server instances in the U.K. and western and southern Europe region. The outage lasted for 2 hours from 5:30 AM EDT to 7:30 AM EDT.
CenturyLink — August 30, 2020
On August 30, 2020, at 04:24 AM EDT, CenturyLink, an internet service provider (ISP), suffered a major outage that affected multiple online services, including Cloudflare, Amazon, Hulu, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Feedly, Discord, and others. Due to a misconfiguration in one of its data centers, the technical outage led to a 3.5% drop in global internet traffic. However, after seven hours of delay, services were restored at 11:12 am EDT.
Tesla — September 23, 2020
On September 23, 2020, at 11:00 AM EDT, Tesla suffered an hour-long global network outageOpens a new window with its internal systems that left several Tesla owners unable to connect to their cars through the mobile app or the website. Tesla’s energy products, Tesla solar, and Powerwall home battery systems were inoperative too. The outage was due to an internal break of their application programming interface (API). The connectivity was restored within thirty minutes.
Microsoft — September 28, 2020
On September 28, 2020, at 5:25 PM EDT, Microsoft suffered a massive outage affecting Office 365 services, including Outlook, Office, Power Platform, Microsoft Teams, and Dynamics365. The outage was reportedly due to the implementation of a recent change in its services, and the issue was resolved at 12:00 AM EDT.
We’re investigating an issue affecting access to multiple Microsoft 365 services. We’re working to identify the full impact and will provide more information shortly.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) September 28, 2020Opens a new window
How Can Companies Minimize Outages?
The meteoric rise of systemic outages in 2020 are alarm bells for companies. Find out what companies can learn from the increasing internet mishaps.
1. Locate the Source of Weakness
The first thing a company must do on experiencing a network outage is to look for the origin of the outage. Once the source of the outage is identified, the engineering team can quickly resolve the issue. After this, the company can strengthen its weak internal and external network links and prevent massive downtime.
2. Check Cloud Infrastructure Regularly
The CenturyLink outage, which took down several internet services, shows that companies must regularly monitor their cloud infrastructure. Companies can easily prevent such an outage by opting for multiple cloud infrastructures. They can also choose wireless networks to avoid complete shutdown during a network outage.
3. Roll Out Service Changes Gradually
The Microsoft Office outage was great learning for other businesses to implement a new change in the network or services carefully. Massive IT changes that are implemented at a time can affect the business network. IT teams should implement new changes slowly and check them on the testing environment before rolling them out.
4. Automate Networks
The onset of pandemic and reduced onsite workforces have prompted 60% of the U.S. businesses to adopt network automation, as per an Opengear researchOpens a new window . Network automation can easily prevent a network outage.
Steve Cummins, vice president of marketing at Opengear, said, “In today’s current climate, it is proving difficult for organizations to get engineers onsite, especially at edge/branch sites to resolve network outages. Add to this the time spent traveling coupled with the loss in business during an outage, it’s no surprise that many organizations are adding NetOps capabilities to their out-of-band networks, expanding their ability to manage and repair network outages deployed at those remote locations.â€
Network outages cause severe financial damage and cost the company its brand reputation. As most businesses have shifted to the cloud, companies must implement a preventative maintenance program to minimize IT downtime and reduce the monumental impact on their business and customers. A resilient network and proactive engineering team can help ensure minimal downtime.
Is your company taking the right measures to prevent a network outage? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!