August 21, 2007

When Skype Goes Down Your Customers Don't Care. They Shouldn't Have To.

Ok, so you're a small business doing a sizable contract. You've been relying on "free" or low cost Skype services for telephone service, voice mail and etc. You've been showing off to your buddies that you can make phone calls when cellular coverage is down - all you need is broadband.

But when, Skype went down for some time on August 16 and millions of users were affected. What does this mean?

Maybe you couldn't conduct business like usual - while your buddies could. You need a reliable back up plan for these services.

Rarely will your traditional phone service go down. While I'm not advocating that you not use a new, upstart, fancy service - I am saying that if you do decide to base your ENTIRE ENTERPRISE on a new technology be prepared and have a backup plan.

It makes ZERO cents and it is ONLY your fault, if some snazzy new technology you are relying on goes down and a client fires you. You can blame the service provider all you want but your client's aren't going to care.

Another example. Grand Central, recently bought by Google had to tell about 400 customers that it would have to reassign them a new number, different than the number they were originally assign "for life".

Think of your core technologies and work with your local consultant to arrange for a backup plan. If having access to the Internet is important for you - I mean REAL important - you should consider having a backup Internet connection. If having access to a particular hosted application is critical to you - you need to think about what happens if they go down for several hours.

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