In a previous article, we discussed the advantages of using an on-site data center for our production instead of using cloud services, but from the perspective of our clients, Promethean is a cloud service. So why should a client trust Promethean over a major cloud service? The answer can be as simple as availability.
Recent outages across the tech landscape have highlighted the importance of availability and even forced some to reconsider cloud dependencies. In July alone, we saw widespread outages of cloud services due to everything from DDoS attacks to service degradation to faulty updates that affected millions of people worldwide. Emergency services, airlines, banks, warehouses, medical services, and retail all came to a stop because many cloud services suddenly became unavailable.
These visual representations, with the first image showing a live outage map for a recent cloud outage in May, and the second highlighting their geographical distribution and the number impacted, underscore the urgent need for robust, resilient infrastructure in today’s cloud-reliant world.
Unfortunately, these incidents are common, and the number of US-centric outages is increasing. During these outages, services become unavailable for minutes, hours, or sometimes days. To a company hosting their data center in the cloud, this means limited access to production resources or even the entire production environment. To a client relying on cloud services, this means a production slowdown and loss of revenue.
Some of the largest cloud service providers experience frequent outages, and some, like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, catalog the history of their cloud downtime and make it available for public viewing. When availability is a priority, reviewing the outage history of these cloud services can be quite concerning.
By contrast, Promethean maintains 99.99% uptime and near-constant service availability for our clients and trading partners. While other cloud services have individual outages lasting hours at a time, Promethean has had a total of 1 hour and 5 minutes of downtime in the last 18 months, of which 30 minutes were due to scheduled maintenance. Compared to major cloud services, the availability of Promethean’s on-site data center is relatively unmatched.
In conclusion, the recent cloud outages highlight the critical need for robust, resilient infrastructure. As companies face increasing disruptions, our investment in our reliable on-site data center ensures continuous operation and minimizes risk associated with cloud dependencies. The urgency for dependable data solutions has never been more apparent in the wake of these recent major outages.