The Major Takeaways from the Big Facebook Outage of 2021

Unless you live under a rock and somehow missed it, Facebook experienced an outage, an inconvenience that kept users from accessing its services all over the world. Perhaps to your surprise, the real ramifications of this outage have nothing to do with people not being able to share pictures of their cats or yell at each other in the comments.

Let’s take a look at the event and what your business can learn from it.

The True Scope of the Outage Went Far Beyond Facebook

The fact of the matter is that not only was Facebook impacted, but so too were the other services it has acquired over the years, including an unlaunched web operating system called Parakey back in 2007 and the CRM platform Kustomer in 2020. Rest assured, Meta (the company that Facebook is owned by) also owns other services that were affected by the outage.

The big issue is that businesses relying on Facebook and its other applications were also impacted by the outage. WhatsApp, for example, is a VoIP and messaging application used by many organizations, so if Facebook goes out, then it stands to reason that this would create problems for any companies that rely on it. It’s the same case for any service that uses Facebook as its login credential. Users simply were not able to use these services during the outage.

You can see how one outage can set off a chain reaction and create problems for countless organizations around the world. It just goes to show that you can’t always rely on one particular solution or service for all of your needs.

Your Company Needs a Backup Plan

If some businesses were crippled by the Facebook outage, then imagine what would happen in the event of a Google or Microsoft outage. Granted, you could be using a solution that is not affiliated with either, and that could go down just as easily. It’s safe to say that no business is immune to this challenge, so you must do what you can to prepare for it.

The key to solving this dilemma is to use the business continuity planning mindset to your advantage. With business continuity, you are actively preparing for your business to not have access to assets that allow it to function. In other words, you should have a contingency plan in place, and your employees need to be able to make the shift regardless of where they happen to be working. If you can make this happen, then you’re in a good spot.

We Can Help Your Company Prepare for Any Kind of Disaster

There is so much that can go wrong for your business, especially where data and access are concerned. Let the professionals at SCW put your minds at ease with our managed services. To learn more, give us a call at (509) 534-1530.