Recently, American Airlines was forced to ground almost 2000 flights for a period of several hours, frustrating and stranding thousands of passengers. Eventually, spokespeople from American stated that a “computer networking problem” had caused the crisis, but that was small comfort to the stranded individuals. While this event hit close to home for those travelers who were directly affected by it, the incident also illustrates broader concerns about customer service and network redundancy.
I recently spoke with Scott Pedersen, senior director of architecture and technology at iPass Managed Network Services about these very topics. As Pedersen pointed out, many of the individuals that were stranded by this technical issue are themselves businesspeople, so he hoped that they were able to see firsthand how lack of redundancy can adversely impact customer service. Many passengers declared their intention never to fly with American again, and that is exactly the kind of disaster that companies in any field want to avoid.
As Pedersen pointed out, there was any number of possible glitches that could have caused an outage like this. Companies are so tied to their connectivity these days that, when there are problems, there is a significant impact on business. Businesses need to ensure that these complex systems have checks in place and adequate redundancy to deal with potential outages. If a company is relying on a single circuit or network pathway, anything that goes wrong with that pipe could cause catastrophic failure. With multiple pathways and technologies, businesses can ensure the extra availability that is critical in times of crisis.
Another lesson to take from this story, according to Pedersen, is that companies need to be aware of the value of dollars spent on redundancy and testing. Some companies my feel that these types of systems would be too expensive, but, in the event of a failure, they would feel the economic burden of angry customers who can express their displeasure with a brand on social media sites and spread their displeasure to thousands in a matter of seconds. This is why, Pedersen says, it is important for companies to have distributed applications and distributed network pathways.
There are many causes that could lead to a network outage, from infrastructure failure to software glitches. Pedersen points out that service level agreements (SLAs) are not good enough in this day and age. They can give companies targets, but not promises. Business should not rely on a piece of paper, but instead spend money wisely on technology that can ensure network connectivity: disparate paths, carriers, technologies, etc.
As Pedersen says, if you are a distributed enterprise in North America, you have several choices. You can rely on a private network and data center to access the Internet. However, businesses must deal with providers based on geography, and having one provider might seem easy, but companies are then at the mercy of that provider. This creates a single point of failure at the data center and the provider. On the other hand, having multiple providers and disparate technology paths is a good option, but the challenge lies in finding these different providers.
A company like iPass (News - Alert) Managed Network Services can help with these issues. iPass deals with the messy back end, finding providers, adding Internet circuits from different providers for redundancy with a minimal uptick in cost. Companies need to be aware of the pitfalls of network failure, and they must also be aware that using a managed network services company like iPass can make the process of ensuring redundancy much easier. It would eliminate the headache of dealing with multiple providers – and potential headaches that could occur in the event of a network failure. After all, there is nothing tougher than winning back a disgruntled customer, so why take a chance with angering them in the first place?
Edited by Rich Steeves