Keep calm and carry on

A DNS provider is similar to the old telephone switchboard operators. When you enter a web address like gettimely.com, GoDaddy (and other companies like them) tell that request which website to go to.

For Timely – GoDaddy hosts our DNS records for the gettimely.com domain – however the app itself is hosted on the awesome Microsoft Windows Azure platform and we have back-up DNS providers.

We are acutely conscious that service outages will directly affect our customers, who are all very busy business owners/operators. So we had a backup plan to ensure Timely kept running when our primary DNS provider went down. Our customers could simply access Timely from app.timely.co.nz instead of app.gettimely.com.

A common concern with cloud computing is that the cloud apps can “go down” or be interrupted by network outages and the likes. While this is true, today’s outage at GoDaddy shows that with a simple plan B in place, cloud providers can reduce or remove the affect of outages on their customers. Our Timely family “kept calm and carried on” quite happily booking their appointments – by simply accessing Timely from another address.

So let me take this opportunity to thank whoever was responsible for GoDaddy being broken today. You helped show how a cloud app can continue uninterrupted, with a simple plan B in place.