Good often comes from negative events. That’s not just optimism speaking; it’s a reality for those creative entrepreneurs who can step back and diagnose what went wrong, and identify what went right, when serious situations arise. Successful channel professionals understand the value of those assessment capabilities and learn to evaluate the internal and external factors which can majorly impact their businesses. In other words, they avoid errors and improve their operations using lessons learned from others’ mistakes.
Last week’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) outage is the perfect example. The company explained that human error caused the failure of one of its S3 subsystems on the morning of February 28th which majorly impacted services such as Slack, Trello, Down Detector and a host of others (big and small). While the issues were isolated to the Northeast region, a number of companies without alternate servers went offline until the problem was resolved later in the day.
The good news is this was not a catastrophic or life-threatening event. Amazon fully disclosed what happened in an apologetic letter and committed to speed up a project that may have prevented, or at least minimized the impact of this incident.
The better news? IT services providers can use this failure as a “teaching moment” for customers and prospects, allowing them to have deeper conversations around resiliency and uptime. One of the largest objections channel firms face remains one of the hardest to address: If the cloud fails, our business will go black…
Consider this: Many companies that host their services on AWS did not experience major issues during the Northeast regional failure. Those cloud suppliers didn’t rely solely on the affected servers and had backup plans in place. While their own employees may have had to deal with minor glitches or slowdowns as their backup systems kicked in, their end customers may not have noticed a thing. By spreading their applications across multiple geographic regions, those cloud companies minimized their downtime exposure and all the associated risks and repercussions.
That’s a lesson for the channel. Providers and the vendors who help deliver their cloud services must do do a better job of building and conveying their online continuity plans. What backup systems are in place if their primary server sites went down? Where are they located? What’s the process and timeline for cut-over?
The answers to each of these questions should be a part of the conversation providers have with potential cloud services clients. There is no need to bash AWS or other suppliers, it will only diminish their opinion of your company and the cloud model in general. Simply realize that if a prospect is pushing back on implementation or seems hesitant about a prospective vendor, they may be concerned about the risks of moving a key part of their business operations offsite. Ask about their specific concerns. Do they have a problem with the cloud in general, or with one particular supplier?
Those concerns may be easily overcome with the right information. As the 2017 CompTIA Industry Outlook report shows, many businesses are simply becoming overwhelmed with all the options, marketing spin and confusion in the marketplace. That leaves the door wide open for channel firms with the ability to cut through the chaff and focus on their corporate objectives. Some are looking for a navigator to walk them through the options and to vet the viability of prospective suppliers —especially related to the issues that took so many AWS partners offline last week.
Is your team properly equipped to guide prospects through the cloud ecosystem? Can they effectively convey the opportunities and the pitfalls of various options, and design the best solutions for their specific business? The lessons learned from the AWS incident may help. Perhaps that will be the good that comes out of a bad situation?
Brian Sherman is Chief Content Officer at GetChanneled, a channel business development and marketing firm. He served previously as chief editor at Business Solutions magazine and senior director of industry alliances with Autotask. Contact Brian at Bsherman@getchanneled.com
