The recent Microsoft outage will have affected businesses in different ways. For some, it may have been little more than a temporary inconvenience. For others, it could have brought parts of their business to a standstill.
But now that services are returning to normal, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect.
How resilient is your business when the services you rely on every day suddenly become unavailable?
Consider a few questions:
- Could you keep communicating? If Outlook and Teams were unavailable, did you have alternative ways to contact customers, suppliers and colleagues?
- Could you keep working? Were you able to access the information, documents and systems you needed to continue serving your customers?
- Could you keep customers informed? If your usual communication channels were unavailable, how quickly could you update your website or publish information through an alternative channel?
- Could your team operate remotely? If Microsoft 365 was unavailable, did your staff know what to do and how to continue their work?
- Did you have a plan? Or was everyone left trying to work out what to do as the situation unfolded?
It’s about more than Microsoft
Microsoft 365 is an incredibly useful platform, and for many businesses it is central to day-to-day operations. But no service is immune to disruption, regardless of how large or established its provider is.
The important question isn’t whether you should use Microsoft 365. It’s whether your business can cope when you can’t access it.
Business continuity isn’t simply about backing up your data. It’s about ensuring you can still operate, communicate and access the resources you need when something goes wrong.
That means considering alternative communication channels, access to critical information, contingency arrangements and, importantly, making sure your staff know what to do.
A wake-up call?
If the recent outage exposed gaps in your arrangements, now is a good time to address them.
A disaster recovery and business continuity plan doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be practical, documented and tested. It should identify what your business relies on, what happens if those services become unavailable, and how you will continue operating until normal service is restored.
Don’t wait for the next outage to discover where your weaknesses are.
At Globe2, we help businesses make better use of technology while keeping security, reliability and business continuity in mind.
If this incident has made you question how prepared your business really is, we’d be happy to have a conversation.
Globe2 – Honest, knowledgeable and accessible IT support.
