The recent major AWS outage on October 20th, which reportedly cost companies hundreds of millions and took down major platforms from Snapchat to Slack, served as a stark reminder: Disruption is the new normal.
For decades, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) focused on the physical—fire, flood, or a server room failure. Today, the greatest threats are often digital, cascading, and originate from a single, centralized point, like a DNS error in a key cloud region. This shift means that simple Disaster Recovery (DR)—the recovery of IT systems—is no longer enough. Businesses must prioritize Operational Continuity—the resilience of the entire value chain.
If your core operating process relies on a third-party application or a single cloud region, you are only as resilient as their last status update. The question is no longer if a critical vendor will fail, but how long your business can still serve a customer when they do.
The Problem of Digital Cascades
The AWS incident was a classic digital cascade: A small error in a highly integrated service (like a DNS failure affecting DynamoDB) triggered a chain reaction that crippled dependent services across the region.
The takeaway for every leader is clear: Your biggest single point of failure may not be in your office; it’s likely a shared utility in the cloud.
For a few clients we recently worked with, the realization of this vulnerability—from geopolitical risks to localized network issues—drove them to seek a comprehensive plan that went far beyond IT to address the entire organization.
It is crucial to understand that the need for a robust response transcends the category of the threat. Whether the disruption is a physical supply chain breakdown, a financial liquidity crisis, or a catastrophic digital failure, the principle remains the same: If it poses a threat to revenue or reputation, you must plan for remediation. The AWS outage is the perfect case study. It wasn’t a malicious attack, but a simple technical “race condition” error. Yet, the business impact was enormous. Relying solely on a third-party’s performance target of 99.99% uptime is insufficient; true resilience comes from having an actionable, tested plan for what your teams will do during that crucial period of vendor recovery.
Keys to Operational Continuity in the Digital Age
A robust Business Continuity Plan must evolve from a technical checklist to a complete operational blueprint. Here are the three pillars of preparedness:
1. Map the Operational Dependency, Not Just the IT Stack
A traditional DR plan says: “If Server X fails, switch to Backup Server Y.” An Operational Continuity plan asks: “If our Order Management System (which runs on Server X) fails, how do we process customer orders manually, who takes the lead, and how do we communicate the delay?”
- Action: Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) for every critical function (Sales, Logistics, Finance). Prioritize based on Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD). A 4-hour delay in invoicing might be acceptable; a 4-hour delay in customer fulfillment is likely catastrophic.
- The Go-To: Define clear manual workarounds and the paper-based or alternative communication flows necessary to keep the core function running for a defined period (e.g., 24 hours).
2. Design for Multi-Region and Multi-Cloud Redundancy
Over-reliance on a single cloud region is the ultimate concentration risk. If your primary goal is continuity, you must distribute risk.
- Action: Implement Multi-Region Architecture (running core services in at least two separate geographic availability zones) or explore a Multi-Cloud Strategy for mission-critical functions. For example, keep your core financial ERP on Azure while your customer-facing applications run on AWS.
- The Go-To: Ensure your data backup strategy uses a different region or even a different provider than your primary host. The recovery point must be truly independent of the primary point of failure.
3. Formalize the Human Response: Hierarchy and Drills
The best plan is useless if the team can’t execute it under pressure. During a crisis, clarity of command and communication is paramount.
- Action: Clearly define the Crisis Management Team (CMT)—who activates the plan, who owns external communications, and who manages internal resources. This structure needs a hierarchical command that can launch the continuity process instantly, as we developed for the IoT manufacturer.
- The Go-To: Test your plan regularly using Tabletop Exercises. Simulate a failure of your main cloud provider, a supplier shutdown, or a key staff unavailability. This stress-testing builds muscle memory, identifies overlooked dependencies, and ensures the human element of your plan is flawless.
Operational Continuity is not about achieving zero-failure—that’s impossible. It’s about designing a system that ensures a single external failure, no matter how large, cannot entirely halt your ability to deliver products or services to your customers.
