Lost In The Clouds: What happens when there is a cloud outage?

Feeding off of the flexibility offered, in terms of access, reliability, and scalability, more and more companies are turning to cloud based solutions for both their data storage and application needs. On the occasions cloud-based solutions become unavailable, however, due to disruptions at either the provider or the means of access, companies can quickly find themselves devastated, as productivity grinds to a halt.

To ensure your company remains robust in the face of interruptions to the cloud, Stephen J. Bigelow, senior technology editor at TechTarget Inc., offers a six point plan:

1. Create a disaster recovery plan
2. Ensure open communications between both suppliers and user
3. Examine the costs and efforts required to restore each function in the event of an outage
4. Test your disaster recovery plan, to find weaknesses or omissions
5. Monitor your usage during recovery, to determine how recovery is proceeding
6. On completion of recovery, examine the performance against the plan, and revise the plan accordingly

While no failure and recovery will be identical, by constantly iterating the above process, a company should be able to minimize the impact on operations of any failures of cloud-based services. 

Source:

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/photostory/252469890/6-steps-to-survive-a-cloud-outage/1/Prepare-for-a-cloud-outage