Avoiding technology failure with some simple thoughts for success

Email servers around the world took a few hours off on New Year's Eve and stopped delivering email. 

So you didn't know that? Or maybe you don't care? 

As a business professional, let me ask you one question, do you ever use email for time-sensitive mission-critical correspondence?

I don't want to get too deep into the geek speak, but simply share a scenario, point out an event, and share some thoughts. I hope to invite both business and technology people into the discussion.  

First the scenario.

Let's say on New Year's Eve I said I would send you an important email around 8:00 p.m. You waited until 9:30 p.m. and after not receiving the email you sent me an email stating how angry you were because I failed to send the email I promised to send you.

The email I sent you at 8:00 p.m. didn't arrive in your email inbox until around 11:30 p.m. That would be about the same time I would receive your 9:30 p.m. email stating how mad you were for me not doing my job.

Explaining the event.

So what happening? On New Year's Eve, there was a worldwide event that caused problems for email servers around the world.

Network administrators worldwide discovered that their servers were no longer delivering email. After investigating, they found that mail was getting stuck in the queue and not being delivered. As the problem was being discovered, servers were eventually patched, and mail began to flow.

For some people, their initial reaction might be, oh well, this was just a one-time glitch. The reality is, these types of issues happen all the time.

There are a variety of issues, server bugs, problems with spam filters, email domains getting blacklisted by service agencies, that cause email correspondence to get bogged down on many levels.

This brings me to the point that some people might not want to hear, email is not reliable for time-sensitive mission-critical correspondence.

So let's think about it.

In computer networking, out-of-band is a phrase used to describe a method of connecting with someone outside of your usual and customary way. In other words, if your usual and customary way goes down, what is your backup plan that does not rely on your main network.

What else can you use as a backup to email? 

If you ask, what about (SMS) text messaging? Yes, that's an alternative, but you might be surprised to find out that (SMS) text messaging is not a guaranteed service. 

One example that comes to mind is traditional analog phone service sometimes referred to as POTS (plain ordinary telephone service) is often still in use by some organizations as a backup to internet-based communications. The fact that traditional analog phone service is typically separate from internet services is the main reason people keep analog phone service as a backup.  

As I state in my LinkedIn profile, I don't have all the answers, I just hope I can help you better understand the questions. So let me ask a few questions.

For my business friends and connections, I would simply ask you to stop and think about the question, have you become too dependent on using email for any particular process in your organization? 

For my technology friends and connections, I would invite your comments on my thoughts. Am I being too much of an alarmist by trying to tell the business side of the world not to be so dependent on traditional email for mission-critical communications?

#email #business #technology #success #planning #GeekHistory