It’s hard to make sense of last week’s Microsoft outage.
Is it a hammer blow for public cloud or the ‘cashless society’? What does it mean for cybersecurity poster child CrowdStrike, whose defective update caused the blackout? And is our all-inclusive in Marbella still on?
As the dust settles, IT Channel Oxygen rounds up the thoughts of five very different commentators, each of whom offered a quirky and illuminating take on what’s being dubbed the biggest IT outage ever.
“If I was running or advising any company today, I would at least go ‘multi cloud’”
Retired analyst Richard Holway had a simple take on the outage, namely that the world has become too dependent on a small cluster of tech providers.
“If I was running or advising any company today, I would at least go ‘multi cloud’. Indeed I would spread my risks around different platforms and providers,” he wrote.
“At the risk of ridicule, I might well bring some critical stuff back ‘in-house’ onto ‘on-premise’ systems.”
“Outage will force cloud rethink”
Holway wasn’t alone in predicting the episode could have profound consequences for how organisations view public cloud.
“Omdia’s Cloud and Data Center analysts have long warned about over-reliance on cloud services. Today’s outages will make enterprises rethink moving mission-critical applications off-premises,” wrote Maxine Holt, Senior Director of Cybersecurity at analyst Omdia.
“The ripple effect is massive, hitting CrowdStrike, Microsoft, AWS, Azure, Google, and beyond. CrowdStrike’s shares have plummeted by more than 20% in unofficial pre-market trading in the US, translating to a staggering $16bn loss in value.”
“Moments like this happen to the best of us”
Despite taking heat from all corners, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz found an ally in his opposite number at Sophos.
In a “respectful reminder” to the security industry, Joe Levy warned against “’we don’t crash systems claims’ while people’s worlds are upside down”.
“Moments like this happen to the best of us, and we all deserve peer support while our employees, customers, and partners are dealing with the matter. Go back to competing fiercely once the fires are out,” he wrote.
“New conversation needed on how we keep cash in our society”
Dreams of a ‘cashless society’ were also dealt a blow by the incident as shoppers across the UK and elsewhere were unable to make card payments.
This was not lost on GMB National Officer Eamon O’Hearn.
“Today’s outage reinforces what GMB has been saying for years – cash is a vital part of how our communities operate,” he said.
“When you take cash out of the system, it means people have nothing to fall back on, impacting on how they do the everyday basics – even buying food.
“Today needs to be the start of a new conversation at a local and national level of how we keep cash in our society.”
“Should CrowdStrike be fired or retained?”
Despite CrowdStrike winning plaudits for how it has faced the crisis head on, MSP outsourcing expert James Vickery posed the question of whether customers will abandon the next-generation cybersecurity player for another vendor.
“I have two minds about this – rolling out an update without testing AND rolling it out globally instead of incrementally suggests a staggering level of dysfunction,” he wrote as he submitted a LinkedIn poll on the question.
“While at the same time I’m reminded that we can all learn from failure in our businesses and adapt. Who knows, this might make them a better, stronger vendor?”
