As I write this the global IT giant Microsoft has been experiencing outages across most of its key products, including OneDrive, Office, Outlook, and the much hated Teams. Microsoft 365 would be the main software package used by most organisations. As you can imagine this is causing serious issues for a lot of governments, companies, schools, universities, and basically everyone who works on a computer.
I have grown to absolutely literally loathe Microsoft the past few years. In my day job we develop applications for Windows, and trying to use their developer systems and online platforms is a dystopian hell hole of complexity and zero support. They are incredibly frustrating to work with. So while part of me has sympathy for all my fellow IT workers around the globe, the other part of me is thinking that is could not happen to a nicer company.
To be fair to Microsoft their OneDrive product is pretty solid and I use it myself. I also use Windows and the Microsoft Office suite and I’m still amazed that they have never had any real competition for Office. Microsoft is following the well-worn path of large monopolies who get lazy and complacent.
It’s too early to work out what caused this outage. Was it a hack or human error? Personally my money is on AI. Large companies have been embracing AI to write their code and manage their systems and it’s only a matter of time before it all goes to sh*t. As one person on Twitter put it ‘Incompetent management using Incompetent offshore workers using incompetent AI.’
It is ironic that the internet was specifically designed to have no single points of failure but over the past 20 years we have seen most of the control go into the hands of a few companies, mainly Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare. You might not be familiar with Cloudflare but they are the company that protects a lot of websites and also provides a lot of the backend hosting of sites. We use them here at Slugger to help speed up the site and protect us. They are actually an excellent company with an amazing service at a bargain price but the problem with their popularity is that when they go down they literally take down half the internet with it as well (as happened last year).
It can be hard for companies to know the best way to manage their IT systems. The truth is that Microsoft, Google, etc., will be more reliable and secure than trying to do things yourselves. Many organisations just don’t have the IT staff and knowledge to manage systems internally anymore. I’m in this business long enough to remember times when you would go into an organisation and there would be a rickety server in the corner that was managing all the files, email, etc. Nine times out of ten there were never any backups of the server done and people were playing with fire.
The European Union has recently woken up to the fact that they are extremely dependent on the American multinational IT companies and this is a potential problem for European sovereignty and independence. In simple terms Donald Trump could instruct Microsoft, Google, etc., to switch off access for European users and we would all be completely f*cked. There are new initiatives like Office.EU but they look a little half baked so far.
If you’re shopping around for a new provider, it is hard to beat Google Workspace. Their systems have been rock solid for me but if you want to move away from the tech behemoths, then I would look at https://www.fastmail.com and https://proton.me
Away from office and productivity suites there are other key companies like the payment provider Stripe. Stripe is an excellent company, founded by the Irish Colston brothers. I use them for all my projects and they are a dream to work with compared to the clunky payment providers that came before them. But again because they are so popular now, if they ever go down it would take down most of the web’s e-commerce. Then you have Meta. Most of us would be perfectly happy to live without Facebook but could we survive long without WhatsApp?
Then you have Apple, which manages the digital lives of billions. Everything now is centred around our smartphones: our flight boarding passes, our banking apps, our parking apps, our messaging and photos, two-factor authentication apps, etc. I do dread what would ever happen if my iPhone dies.
Many companies have started to leave the cloud and move their systems back internally. The well-respected software company 37 Signals claim that leaving the cloud will save them over 10 million in the next 5 years. But the downside of doing this is you need to make sure you have very sharp IT staff.
So I will imagine Microsoft will get these systems restored and we will all move on but it does no harm for organisations to consider what would happen if their key systems go offline. It’s also key to remember that all these services provide export options so you can take a copy of your emails, files, photos, etc. It is worthwhile doing this every now and again and storing it on your own computer. I do warn you that it is a bit of a faff to do this so if you’re worried it probably makes more sense to use a third-party service like iDrive, which will take copies off your cloud services.
But I’m telling you, with AI we’re going to see a lot more problems with IT systems over the next few years, which is part of the reason the government is warning us all to have stocks of food and water. They’re not worried so much about the Russians invading, but about key systems going down in supermarkets, utilities, etc. Stock up the next time you’re out.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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