The recent AWS outage reminded me of another incident. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. None of the other oil companies made much public noise about it.

Why not? Because they knew it could happen to them.

Just a few days ago, AWS experienced a major outage that affected over 1,000 companies.

Another tech firm publicly mocked them. This same company has laid off roughly 80 percent of its original workforce. Why is that detail important?

Consider how much institutional knowledge was never documented and instead walked out the door in file boxes and personal belongings. Systems may continue to run for a time, but the experience required to diagnose rare or complex failures may no longer be there.

If you ask me, that organization is now a ticking time bomb. When a major failure eventually occurs, recovery could be slow, difficult, and very public. But at least it might create a new Use Case for college business text books.