Is there anything more frustrating than an internet outage? We don’t realize how reliant we are on internet connectivity to run a spa or salon until an outage comes along and hampers our ability to book appointments, coordinate schedules, and, worst of all, accept payments. It's enough to throw your entire business off for the day, and it can have a lingering impact even once service is back up.
Such was the case in December for many spas and salons — not to mention hundreds of other types of businesses — when Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered not one but two major outages. AWS, which powers a reported 33% of the cloud services market, went down on December 7th and again on December 15th, taking with it some of the websites, apps and online services we rely on every day. From DoorDash and Venmo to Slack, Netflix and Facebook, businesses across the United States were disrupted, generally causing “chaos” throughout the country.
Another major outage — either to AWS or other cloud services providers — is going to happen. It’s a matter of when, not if. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your spa or salon is prepared to handle it when it does.