What We Can Learn from the Facebook Outage

We’re all aware of the outage that Facebook experienced a few weeks before it announced its Meta rebrand, which prevented users around the world from accessing the services that the social media giant provides. While it may not sound like a huge deal that people couldn’t share their thoughts with one another for a short time, the ramifications stretched far beyond the inability to scroll through a Newsfeed.

Let’s discuss the situation that we all witnessed, and the lessons that all businesses can take away from it.

The True Scope of the Outage Went Far Beyond Facebook

Well, sort of. The reality is that “Facebook” is/was far more than just the social network that goes by that name. Throughout its history, Facebook has also spent over $23 billion in acquiring other companies and assets, from the unlaunched web operating system Parakey back in 2007 to the CRM (customer relationship management) platform Kustomer in November of 2020.

In no uncertain terms: Meta, the company that owns Facebook, also owns many other things… many of which also went down along with Facebook.

The problem is that a lot of businesses rely on Facebook and its associated applications and services for a lot. It’s a known fact that WhatsApp, a VoIP and messaging application, is used by a lot of businesses. However, those businesses were without this tool for the entire time Facebook was experiencing their outage. The same went for any website that allowed its users to log in using Facebook Login… their users were locked out for the duration of the outage, and therefore couldn’t make any purchases.

If there’s any takeaway that businesses should receive from this whole situation, it’s clearly not to put all of their eggs in one basket—Facebook’s or otherwise. However, this is sometimes unavoidable, particularly if they’re utilizing a unified workplace platform. So, what can be done?

Your Company Needs a Backup Plan

Let’s face facts for a moment: for all the businesses that were suddenly restricted when Facebook went down, the impact if Microsoft or Google went down would be far greater. Alternatively, you could very well be using a line of business application that is completely unaffiliated with either that could go down. Either way, the impact would be the same: your business would be stuck.

We frequently talk about business continuity planning, and for good reason. However, we typically talk about it in terms of a disaster taking a direct impact on your place of business: power loss, fire, or equipment damage preventing you from accessing your business’ resources and causing data loss. However, your business continuity could just as easily be affected by one of your providers suffering downtime as well. Is it incredibly likely? No… but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the risk.

You need to have a strategy at the ready that addresses these kinds of complications and the means your team members have to adapt to them, regardless of whether they’re working in-house or remotely. There’s really no telling when these kinds of issues will rear up, and when your company will be amongst those impacted by them.

We Can Help Your Company Prepare for Any Kind of Disaster

There are just too many potential issues that could strike to risk your business and its data… or for that matter, its productivity. Our experienced team can put you in the position to avoid most of these issues or at least greatly reduce the influence they have on your operations. To find out more about what we can do, give Techworks Consulting, Inc. a call at (631) 285-1527.