Many businesses rely on cloud services to keep their data secure and provide the technology infrastructure that keeps their business running from day to day. What would you do if your cloud provider simply shut you down, permanently?
This is the problem Parler is facing first hand, following the suspension of services by the AWS cloud hosting service provider. Amazon AWS announced that it would no longer be providing services to Parler for allegedly violating its terms of service. The news came shortly after what AWS considered a hate-filled rant posted on the Parler network about a video by Mitchell Obama criticizing Donald Trump’s leadership when he was president. Parler, a popular social media platform frequented by conservatives, had recently begun garnering a huge following, which AWS has been shut down without warning and is now on the verge of disappearing, even though Parler is protected from liability of user generated posting under section 230, in the same way Facebook and Twitter are protected.
With a market dominated by only a few providers such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure or Oracle Cloud, if your provider shuts you down and the other providers refuse to take you on as a client, what are you to do?
The Amazon AWS shutdown of Parler has only amplified the fear and ambiguity surrounding cloud outage and downtime. As the industry tries to assess the aftermath of such cloud outages and the impacts they have on users, we are impelled to think that if such powerful providers can shut down a business at a moment’s notice based on what one of that businesses clients did, they could do this to any site hosted on their system.
As for the Amazon AWS and Parler issues, this is for the courts to decide. This article is only using this as an example, as to what could happen if cloud providers are permitted to shut your business down based on a violate of their terms and conditions.
Realistically, there may be a very small probability that your services would be shut down in such a manner, but it is something that we should all consider. Especially if you are using a smaller third-party cloud provider, unaware that they are subcontracting hosting services from AWS or one of the other primary providers. You may think you are on some private companies cloud service when in fact you are hosted as a group amoung other clients on an AWS or other providers servers and are subject to their terms and conditions. So, what happens if your small cloud provider has a client that violates the AWS policies and your cloud provider is shutdown, with you along for the ride?
One common mistake that customers who subscribe to cloud hosting services make is to assume that aspects like data protection, privacy, and compliance are their service providers’ responsibilities. However, Service Level Agreement (SLA) guidelines put most of the responsibility on the customers’ shoulders in times of crisis. A cloud outage can range from a few seconds or minutes, to hours if not days. During this period, all or some of the cloud infrastructure services may be unavailable for client use.
Just because you run your services are on the cloud, doesn’t mean you won’t experience an outage. In March of 2018 Amazon Web Services experienced an outage that affected IT solutions providers Atlassian, Slack and Twilio and also affected its own voice assistant, Alexa for several hours. On January 24, 2019 Microsoft Office 365 became unavailable, affecting 1.2 billion users and just under a week later they had a second outage. In March 2019, Googles Gmail service was down for 4.5 hours.
A few minutes of no email services may be uncomfortable for a company but not detrimental. But can your company withstand more than a day of no email services? Maybe. But what about a service outage of days or weeks? Assuming you have a valid contract with your cloud provider and your cloud vendor is in violation of that agreement for whatever reason. It can take days or even months to resolve the issue in court, let alone getting a court ruling. So, what happens to your business during this period? Will you have access to your backups? Are you heavily dependent on the cloud providers API’s and other software?
So how can you minimize the risk of your business being brought to it knees by a cloud outage? You may want to consider hosting on multiple cloud services if your business is time-sensitive. This prevents you from being locked into a single provider. It is also advisable to stay away from custom API’s provided by your cloud vendor. Cloud providers often provide API’s to make it easier to develop your services, but they also serve to lock you into their platform. Consider utilizing open-source technology so that you can run the same software on several cloud platforms, which helps simplify disaster recovery efforts. In some cases, using open-source solutions may require additional cost for development and maintenance, but in the event of a disaster, it will be money well spent.
Another aspect of disaster preparation is backups. While your cloud services provider may back up the data for you, they may not always be obligated to do so. Just as you would backup on premise databases, you should also regularly back up whatever you store in the cloud, such that valuable data is maintained and not lost in the event of a cloud failure. It is important to ensure you back up software and data to a location that is not controlled by the same cloud vendor. This ensures access to your software and data in the event of a cloud provider outage, and prevents the provider from holding your data hostage, pending determination by the courts.
If you absolutely want to have complete control over your environment, then it may be time to do away with cloud services entirely and go back to traditional systems and focus on managing data using in-house servers. After all, on-site premise servers like company websites have been and continue to be used by many organizations and employees to store data and are backed up using tapes and/or hard drives. This way, you have all the control of your data and resources but you can still be affected by unexpected outages and downtime. However, the major concern with storing an organization’s data on-premises is security. A fire or other natural disaster could also take your business offline.
So, should you consider bringing your services back inhouse? Probably not. The cloud offers many advantages to inhouse hosting. Scaled capacity, secure facilities and redundant internet and power connections are key advantages to cloud-based hosting. However, even if you are using cloud providers to host your services, it is best to heed the age-old adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Make sure you perform regular backups of your software and data to a location where you have access, should your cloud provide become inaccessible. Just because you are using a cloud provider does not mean your business is safe from disaster.
About the Author
Jay LaBonte is the award-winning author of the bestselling book, Your Guiding Genius: Building A World Class Team. Jay holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems and is a Certified Employment Law Specialist. With over thirty years’ experience managing teams of all sizes in various industries, he is no stranger to team leadership and has raised the bar on team building. Mr. LaBonte currently provides IT consulting services through Paradigm Systems, LLC. and is one of the foremost experts on Multivalue database performance tuning and administration. You may contact him by visiting http://www.paradigm-systems.us.