Luck, probability and why it’s good to be in the 0% club
On Friday afternoon, right around pub o’clock for many Australians about 8 million computers around the world or 1% of all computers running Microsoft Windows bluescreened more or less at the same time. To see it in person would have been like one of those end of the world movies where everything turns to s*** and aeroplanes fall out of the sky. For some it probably felt that way too, no doubt the early responders were probably thinking ‘this is a global cyber attack’. Spoiler – it wasn’t.
The cause of this mayhem was a software update having been pushed out to a software product named Falcon, by the company CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike are known as one of the best providers of cyber security defence software globally, it would be so easy to make this article about how terrible CrowdStrike are and how they clearly didn’t test the update properly before releasing it but I’m not going to do that.
So what does luck and probability have to do with this? Put simply, our customers got lucky, they are in the 0% club, not one single customer of Australia Wide IT was directly affected by this event (but no doubt many were indirectly affected). It just happens to be that we don’t use CrowdStrike software but we do use plenty of other large scale, globally distributed and controlled software that could have suffered from the same fate.
There is a silver lining though, the CrowdStrike outage on Friday was avoidable, you can bet your last dollar that heads are going to roll and stock values are going to take a hit. But more importantly other large scale global software vendors and plenty of small ones too will use this as a lesson to improve their own testing processes before releasing software updates and that has to be a good thing for all of us.
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Testimonials
They’ve gotten to know our business so well and they’re truly interested in helping us. It’s like having our own I.T. Department in-house. Australia Wide I.T. takes a personal interest in our team, our business and where we’re going. They’re like family.
Other I.T. companies just didn’t seem to have the same depth of knowledge as these guys. Rather than blame the user (us) they go the extra mile, locate the problem and fix it – Every time!
Coral
We would recommend you to anyone, anytime.
Thank you all so very, very much for all your support. Not to mention bringing back my files to my Company. I cannot thank you guys enough.
Thanks again.
Leigh
Thanks for all your help today. Your patience & tenacity for solving the problem is greatly appreciated.
Jacinta
Your work last week was amazing. You couldn’t have been more supportive or expert in your conduct. I am very grateful and am amazed at your generous invoicing of last week’s work. I can only repay you by recommending you to as many people as possible.
Thank you. It is refreshing to know that when a problem occurs, you are always there – with great service.
Keran
Attentive and thorough, Australia Wide I.T. get onto any of our I.T. problems quickly – with prompt, friendly and efficient service. Whenever we need to upgrade, we know we can trust their knowledge in supplying flawless new equipment that always works both physically, and to suit our needs.
Alison
Our previous I.T. Service Provider was distant, hard to contact and not customer focused. With Australia Wide I.T. we now have great service with a human touch. Our calls are answered promptly and the team is always ready to help in any way.
The maintenance program put in place by AWIT offers us peace of mind that our entire system is correctly and closely monitored.
Monica
Very much appreciate your very quick response today. It was pay day today and I was a bit worried (that we wouldn’t be able to process the pays) but because of you all is well, so a big thanks.
Dale
The team at AWIT deliver nothing but breathtaking service!!!!
Brett
A very big thank you from me to all of the guys there….You make things so easy for us and are always available to help.
A massive shout out to the Nash though for fixing our printer – you nailed it Nash and not only changed MY life, but also helped to save some trees in the Amazon Forest!
Thanks to you all.
Jo
My business has grown from 3 stores to 5 stores over the last 3 years; one of the unfortunate consequences of this has been the fact that our old server and network could not cope with the growth. After much deliberation we chose Australia Wide I.T. to not only arrange the supply and installation of our new network, but to also provide long term support. We have been very pleased with our decision and would happily recommend them.
Bruce