Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Outages: Impact and Recommendations

On July 19, 2024, Microsoft Azure experienced a major outage that impacted several services worldwide. This disruption began on July 18 at 21:56 UTC and affected vital cloud services provided by Azure, such as Microsoft Entra ID and Multi-Factor Authentication.

Additionally, Google Cloud services were also disrupted simultaneously with Azure’s outage. The cause of the Azure outage was service management operation failures and connectivity issues. Similarly, Google Cloud faced network configuration errors and server failures, exacerbating the disruptions’ impact to several industries. An outage is a disruption that occurs outside standard processor expectations. Industries affected by the outages include:

Airlines: Some airlines, such as American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines, cancelled some flights because of the communication failures. Additionally, Thameslink Railway services in the UK were also affected. Airlines, railways, and other means of transportation rely on the cloud to coordinate with airports and ports.

Healthcare: Patients were unable to access their health records since the cloud-based system crashed, leading to delays in patient services. Also, though cloud-based telemedicine services were objective, patients were unable to get proper medical attention.

Finance: The finance industry was badly affected because most banks could not process transactions, leading to potential financial loss, Gaming industry unavailable, soccer bets not available.

Retail: E-commerce platforms operations were halted, and some customers’ orders were not processed. Also, the cloud system was unavailable, and retailers’ stock reported management problems.

Technology and SaaS: The notable SaaS providing companies were unavailable due to the effect of the cloud, business lack of reliability to the customers.

The cost is going to be in the millions of dollars that companies paid to use the Google Cloud and Azure as the clouds are the central cloud solution in their business that need to operate for business owner to secure new business with clients.

Prevention measures for future occurrences are being implemented by both Microsoft and Google. These measures include:

Enhanced Regional Configuration Policies: Microsoft and Google are enhancing regional configuration policies to avoid widespread issues by making errors isolated.

Improved Automation: Microsoft and Google are updating automation configurations to avoid vulnerable critical resource configurations.

Strengthened Incident Response: Microsoft and Google are enhancing incident response automation to ensure they recover from failures quickly.

Better Communication Tools: Microsoft and Google are ensuring faster and more precise updates for reachable customers with services.

Companies should diversify cloud providers; this will ensure that the business is not bankrupt when one cloud cannot be relied on, and the distributor and the centers are not the same. Other recommendations provided are The Azure and Google Cloud status pages on the vendors’ websites provide more information about the service restoration and future actions to prevent the cause from recurring. For new companies introducing cloud computing, solving unknown problems may be a challenge since the cloud computing responds to the variables given, and one needs to know which can be changed and which cannot be changed. This can be achieved if the new company focused on reliability and best practices as such adopt the best practices for reliability system failover mechanism and having regular data centers and focus on the best way to ensure there is no failure by automation system and always be honest with the clients.

For more details purchase our latest report on cloud computing market. The Cloud Computing Market size was USD 618.8 billion in 2023 and is expected to Reach USD 1946.2 billion by 2031 and grow at a CAGR of 15.4% over the forecast period of 2024-2031.

Author

Pawan Padwal, PMP?

S&S INSIDER

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