On Friday, July 18, 2024, there was a major cyber or computer outage due to a piece of bad code. A bug in CrowdStrike security software. The problem impacted many, many computers and systems grounding airlines, because the ground systems were not functioning. Travelers were not able to get flight and ticketing information as those systems went down as well. Global banks, airlines, hospitals and government offices were disrupted. Now, you might be asking, “What does this have to do with audio and video systems?”
While designing systems Advisist Group considers the experience when everything is working perfectly but more importantly when problems happen.
There are a few things the industry can learn from it. I made a LinkedIn post about this topic, which has garnered interesting discussions. The root of the issue was that meeting rooms stopped functioning. For the person I was talking with, it was an integration issue. One could not start the system without a meeting ID. The designer did not think about a situation when the online meeting platforms did not work, such as losing connectivity to the Internet. It could be caused by a cut cable, a misconfiguration of a router, and a basic outage by the provider; there are multiple ways to get disconnected. These seem like basic ideas, but these ideas were not thought about before this happened.
This situation also involves continuity of any business, beyond just video conferencing, and something to think about. We all talk about work from home and how we can do it and how great it is. When an internet outage occurs, we quickly learn the challenges that might have been overlooked. There is no access to files, email, video meetings, telephony, and the list can continue. It is the current condition of modern life, everything’s interconnected.
These situations can be little glitches can be complete work stoppages. The key is to plan for it. For the lack of meeting room functionality, there were a few implementation decisions made that prevented the room from being used. The assumption was made that the room would not be used without an active online meeting. This decision meant that the users could not get past step one of starting a meeting. Having added in a manual or bypass mode to the control system would have avoided that issue. Other choices, such as allowing a meeting to be recorded locally or having an analog phone connection could have helped. It was a design decision. I understand the intent was to make the system as user friendly as possible by having the use of a meeting ID or link configure the system properly. It was the edge case of not having connectivity that was overlooked.
Advisist Group uses Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox and Amazon Cloud among others for daily operations. When starting to define the office systems, one of the things We thought about was what happens when connection to the Internet is not available. Would I have to stop work waiting for it to return. There are a few things we did to avoid that situation, many of which also help us work remotely.
We avoid using online only applications; Microsoft 365 has levels of service that allow for installing the application on your computer. We purchased a 5G hotspot that has a hardwired Ethernet connection to be a backup to the broadband router. We can also go to another location to work.
We also decided to implement a solution that was less intrusive than others. We put a local mirror of the Advisist SharePoint, Dropbox, and Amazon Cloud contents into the local network. We primarily use the local server when in the office. The system synchronizes in the background so no user interaction necessary. It also allows much faster access to files. We can still use the local drive without any reconfiguration necessary. It is off the shelf technology but building it in from the beginning has made the entire process seamless.
Now, you might think this is us saying, “hey, look how cool we are. We can figure out ways to fix technology glitches.” And the answer is yes.
That is what Advisist does. We think about how people use the systems we design. We work through what they are needing to accomplish with their systems. We think about the edge cases as well as the primary uses. We think about technology glitches and how to make it easier for our customers. It could be something as simple as making sure that the user interface for a meeting room allows the user to easily start a local only meeting. It might be adding analog phone lines to each room. It may seem these are small things. These things that start to become important when technology has failures.
I am not blaming or criticizing Microsoft or Zoom or any other company impacted. The outage is a byproduct of the interconnected world. We all have pieces of hardware and software that need to work together. The goal, and part of the design process we should think about is what I used to call the airplane challenge, can this be used completely disconnected from the Internet. The basic case being, if one is trying to work while traveling in an airplane. It is not a simple answer of buy the inflight Internet service, it is not always available. The idea being is can you continue to be productive without a connection. More importantly can clients continue to work through technical hiccups people off site still becomes powerful, just as allowing users to call in remotely, to still at least participate in the audio conference at least. So that’s it.
While designing systems Advisist Group considers the experience when everything is working perfectly but more importantly when problems happen.