Life Without Internet?
reprinted with permission from the HP Small and Medium Business Website

When the Internet first came about, it was simply a source of knowledge and entertainment. Now, however, many people rely on it for everyday activities such as banking, doing business, storing information, mapping locations, communicating and more.

This puts a huge strain on businesses, data center operators and web-hosting service providers as they seek to make web services available around the clock.

But being available 24/7 is not even something the Internet’s biggest businesses—Amazon, Google and Yahoo, for example—can promise: even their sites have suffered from “unplanned downtime” in recent months. The causes of these and other web outages can vary widely: glitches during system upgrades and migrations, human error, electrical failures or even hacking or hijacking.

How does this impact me?
For the average user, finding that a site you frequent is down can result in minor annoyance. However, with the popularity of such services as online banking, delays can cause late fees or overdrawn accounts, turning merely annoyed customers into angry ones.

At the same time, Internet companies like Google are making it free and easy for users to store and access their e-mails, documents, spreadsheets, photos and other personal and professional information online with web-based applications. In other words, Internet companies are making us increasingly dependent on their services. But when they go down, what can we do? Frankly, not much. Some users rant and rave about the company on blogs and forums. Others may decide that business applications do not belong online and should be backed up locally.

But an outage doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put your life on hold or suffer negative consequences. For example, if your bank website is down, you can pick up the phone to check your account balance. If you’re late paying a bill, many financial institutions will happily reverse your late fees if their website’s unavailability was to blame.

What it all comes down to is the question: is the convenience of online services worth the occasional inconveniences?

What about start-ups and smaller businesses?
When the US website of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, crashed for two hours in June, it lost, by some estimates, tens of thousands of dollars for each minute it was down. But Amazon shoppers, realizing the site was unavailable, probably just returned a few hours later to complete their transactions, drastically reducing the calculated loss in sales.

For a less-established business, however, a customer may only visit once. And if the site is not up, they may never come again.

Keep customers happy
So what can small or medium businesses do to protect themselves? While it may be hard to prevent an electrical outage, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of keeping your website site up and your customers happy.

• Research web hosts or service providers and look for those with a track record of high uptimes.
• Update your equipment more often as older equipment such as legacy servers and non-redundant storage can have the inability to handle load increases and complex systems that can all contribute to web failure.
• Work with your IT department to solve any possible issues; sometimes the problem can lie in your own IT infrastructure.

If you are still running outdated systems and want help upgrading to a new system or making a smooth migration, HP Total Care Services can help you choose, use, protect and transition your technology. With comparison tools, online and telephone support, how-to guides, trade-in programmers and more, you’re sure to find an affordable, safe and smart solution.

Finally, if unavoidable failures do happen, sometimes the best policy is to come clean: apologize, acknowledge and explain the situation, and assure your customers that you are doing your best to solve the problem. Keeping your customers in the loop can be crucial in maintaining their trust and confidence—and getting their forgiveness. 

Technology Specialists   1938 Inwood Drive  Fort Wayne, IN 46815-7111  www.tspec.net