Intuit Websites Down
Thousands of U.S. businesses faced a Wednesday without access to Intuit, QuickBooks and other online programs and services, as almost all of the technology vendor’s SaaS (web-based) programs and other websites remained offline.
Intuit’s websites were first reported down around 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. The offline websites included QuickBooks, QuickBooksOnline, Quicken, Lacerte Software, ProSeries and the main corporate website for Intuit. The websites for two recent acquisitions by Intuit, Mint.com and Intuit Online Payroll (formerly PayCycle), remained online.
As of 7:30pm CDT Wednesday, the company had not resolved the down website issues, which was resulting in problems for small businesses and professionals who rely on the web-based resources and programs. Will this pose a longer-term problem for Intuit and for web-based programs in general. Whether these website difficulties prove to be purely technical or the result of external sabotage, there may be a resulting lack of confidence in the SaaS systems.
What do you think?
IMHO, advancing technologies can be a double-edged sword. While I’m not a huge fan of SaaS, I do understand that it has its place in the world. Unfortunately, Intuit happens to be one of the first major companies to have an outage of this magnitude…so they’re catching all kinds of grief from our generation’s version of the lynch mob — social media and blogs. So to all my fellow CPAs and techie geeks, I ask that we please try to remember that this too shall pass.
Another CPA, Michelle Long, has offered some tips for businesses who might be facing some challenges from the Intuit website outages: http://longforsuccess.com/joomla/index.php/blog
Thanks for the feedback, Liz. It is a challenging situation- but one that Intuit and other SaaS providers will need to be better prepared for in the future.
DISCLOSURE: I work for a company whose entire product offering is 100% cloud based. So, yes - I’m biased.
With respect, the suggestion that this outage should result in lack of confidence in SaaS-based systems in general seems like extrapolation, to say the least.
This appears to be a single outage in a single datacenter. It’s bad, for sure - a number of big apps knocked offline and many, many users impacted.
But it’s a single outage that will, I’m sure, be fixed. Assuming things are run even reasonably well at that datacenter, the vast majority of user data should be intact.
Before we leap to the all-too-easy “black cloud” puns, it’s worth pausing to think about the dubious joys of maintaining a desktop system for a small business. Many small business people storing critical data on their local hard drives are likely to be at much higher risk of failure than someone who puts their faith in the cloud.
Think about it: who’s more likely to have the resources to ensure complete data security, redundancy and multi-tiered backups of critical data - a small business running everything on their C: drive or a major cloud computing vendor of the scale of Google or Salesforce? I know Google can afford way bigger servers and backup systems than I ever could.
And don’t forget the joy of having to install and manage local software upgrades, wait months or years for new code updates to be released, and move all your data between systems every few years when your hardware starts to crumble. Oh, and better make sure you’re storing copies of all your critical data in at least two places at all times - you never know when a hard disk crash, laptop theft or other disaster might strike.
OK, now I’m the one who’s fear-mongering, but you get the idea.
Again - this is a major outage, but it has very little to do with the well-proven SaaS-based mode. The benefits in terms of security, mobility and cost for small businesses are hard to beat.
Michael- Thanks for your post.
I am very much a proponent of the SaaS model, but my point was in the concerns that SMB owners might have in the transition, if they haven’t made it yet. I also agree that the SaaS model is safer, more convenient, less roblems with IT and updates and, generally, more glitch-free. However, perception can cause changes in adoption rates.
Still- this was an outage by the largest SMB SaaS provider in the country- likely the world. Intuit also has substantial reach into several core vertical professions, including public accounting and professional tax (the focus of our media outlets).
You are welcome to disclose your technology company if you choose-
Thanks for the mention of my article with some alternative to try to help people cope during the outage. Sage also had a 22 hour outage on June 1 and 2 so Intuit isn’t alone in dealing with these issues. If small businesses are going to use Saas (or Cloud computing), then it is more important than ever to have backup plans or disaster recovery plans in place. They need to be able to continue operations without it for a period of time when something happens–whether a natural disaster or a failure in technology.
10pm CDT — 27 hrs and Intuit is still offline.
How can a modern technology company not have an internet presence for more than a day during a workday? Especially when that company is a SaaS provider for thousands of SMBs? Backup? Redundant servers? If Intuit can’t do it, then what is the benefit of SaaS if there is no redundancy in access?
OOPS–the Sage outage was 22 hours on June 1-2, 2010 — I typed the date wrong! Where’s the edit?
I found the edit and fixed that, Michelle. But there was also a problem with the servers at Intuit back about 1.5 yrs ago. Remember the tax day fiasco that affected consumers (TurboTax) and professionals (ProSeries and Lacerte) because they were both on the same servers? And the IRS had to grant a special exception for people to be late with their electronic filings?
I am a proponent of the SaaS model- but there are problems like this that will continue to scare accountants and business owners.
Thanks Isaac.
For the record, I work for FreshBooks - an online invoicing and bookkeeping company (deemed, by some, to be a competitor to Quickbooks, but that’s actually a lot less relevant here than it might appear).
I figured you guys should be on the side of the SaaS concept in general - good to have that confirmed. Thank you.
Yes, there’s a confidence issue here, but what this highlights for me, in part, is the importance of “caveat emptor”. Not in the negative sense, but more as a reminder that anyone choosing a cloud-based vendor needs to do their due diligence carefully before making the leap.
Keeping online apps running 24/7 is *hard*. A few things are non-negotiable: protecting and securing customers data, ensuring multiple-site failover systems and redundancy are in place, testing and re-testing your crisis plans. But even the best-planned multi-tiered system can fail. Business owners need to look at the uptime record of their vendors and, perhaps even more important, how those vendors react when things go wrong. Therein lies the real test.
You have hit the nail on the head, Michael- how often do you worry about your electricity going out? Or your non IP phone? For a business of any size, a skeptical proprietor will ask the same questions about the reliability of their accessibility. And we are not at the same point yet. Electricity? It’s not going to go out unless there’s a really bad storm. But IP/connectivity? Well- Intuit somehow proved today that we are less reliable than I thought we were. They are the bell-weather company for SMB SaaS- and if they still, 32 hours in, can’t have enough redundancy, then there’s a problem.
All Intuit sites are back online as of a couple of hours ago.
Why did you pull your article entitled “Intuit Gets Storm Warning”?
Sorry about that, Ken. I entered a bad duration date and it expired. I have reentered it: http://www.cpatechnologyadvisor.com/go/2893
Thank you for the quick response and for reposting the article.
There is a lot going on over at Intuit. I hope you get to the truth first.