The Delta Airlines IT Continuity Debacle is a Cautionary Tale

After a “system-wide outage” of their IT network grounded flights globally, Delta Airlines is now the target of a Congressional inquiry. The inquiry is aimed at determining exactly what caused the Delta’s entire IT network to fail. One of the questions U.S. Senators should be asking is, “Why didn’t you have proper data network backup and recovery measures in place?” Because, to us, that seems to be the golden-ticket question in this mess that delayed and stranded thousands all over the world due to one single system failure.

Backup, Recovery, and Continuity

This mantra should have been chanted by stranded and inconvenienced Delta passengers as they stood in the labyrinthine lines to find out why their flights were delayed hours and hours: “Backup, Recovery, and Continuity! Backup, Recovery, and Continuity!” Obviously, Delta’s IT network system was woefully out of date, or wrongly configured. Same difference. Imagine: thousands of passengers standing in line able to access the Delta website on mobile phones, but the corporate commercial airline giant itself standing helpless at the desk, blindly staggering in the dark as at least one interviewed passenger was hoping they “put me on another airline”. You can bet she wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

A Public Relations Disaster

The Delta Airlines IT system failure, although a public relations disaster for them, has a silver lining for the rest of us in the form of its cautionary tale: Don’t do business with outdated, wrongly-configured, or a woefully inadequate IT network. Especially as a corporate giant, where just one of these IT system failures could spell disaster in the form of many thousands of your customers choosing to fly other airlines. But the risk remains. To wit: Any one of the other commercial airline giants could suffer the same fate as Delta, should they, too, not have an IT network configuration that includes the proper implementation of cloud-based backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity. Without it, you are a sitting duck who could be dead in the water tomorrow!

Call an IT Professional and Get Disaster-Ready

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