Who Turned Off the Cloud? Multiple Service Providers Experience Outages

By

The only thing we’ve been hearing about power lately is the lack of it. Power outages have been occurring left and right so far this summer, affecting everyone from restaurants to cloud service providers. When companies employ cloud solutions, they are under the impression this new solution will keep services running and be available all day, every day.

Opting to rely on cloud-based services usually ensures reliability—you don’t have to have your own IT staff to deal with potential problems and you can rely on the provider to take care of issues for you. There are many who still have yet to jump on board with the cloud because of lack of control, and these recent outages are prime examples of that.

Amazon and Salesforce are two major cloud providers who have been experiencing outages in the past few weeks. Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM systems suffered a systematic data center failure that disrupted both normal operations and backup systems, affecting nearly all 68,000 Salesforce customers in the most recent outage.

Amazon Web Services suffered multiple outages so far this year in its Northern Virginia data center, affecting websites such as Quora, Hipchat, Heroku and Dropbox. One outage was caused by a cable fault in the high voltage power distribution system and lasted for more than 18 hours.

France Telecom also experienced a network outage over this past weekend that left 26 million customers unable to make calls or send text messages. The outage was reportedly caused by a software update, and Alcatel-Lucent is working with France Telecom to identify the “root causes” of the outage. The telecom service provider will give all mobile customers a free day of calling in September to compensate them for the service disruption.

But the list doesn’t end there. O2, a major UK provider of mobile phones and broadband, experienced an outage last night, leaving thousands of O2 mobile customers in the UK without service, including the ability to make calls and use data. The company resorted to Twitter to alert customers of the problem and to update about engineers on the case. ‘Virtual’ networks GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile, who piggyback off O2’s infrastructure, were also hit by the outage. 

Disasters and accidents happen, but each minute of downtime costs money, creates headaches and hassle and leaves companies with unsatisfied customers. Providers of cloud and network services need to ensure they’re taking steps to prepare for instances such as these outages.




Edited by Allison Boccamazzo
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

TechZone360 Web Editor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Tech Podcast Award Winners Bring Excitement and Enthusiasm to a Range of Important Tech Topics

By: TMCnet Staff    6/18/2025

Tech Podcast Award winners produce engaging, informative, and often entertaining content, bringing valuable insight from industry front lines to the e…

Read More

How Mobile Technology is Driving the Shift to Casino Apps

By: Contributing Writer    6/12/2025

Recent years have seen casino apps completely changing the online casino experience. Thanks to mobile-first technology, apps are becoming the default.…

Read More

Decentralized IT Management: Fad or Future?

By: Contributing Writer    6/5/2025

Managing IT feels like an ongoing balancing act for many businesses. Centralized systems often create bottlenecks, slow down teams, and frustrate empl…

Read More

IT Management as a Driver of ESG Initiatives

By: Contributing Writer    6/5/2025

Businesses today face growing pressure to meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. Customers demand greener practices. Investors lo…

Read More

Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Casinos

By: Contributing Writer    5/30/2025

We live in the age of technology and we have come to solve things on the go, whether we are talking about personal or job-related issues. We have come…

Read More