Outages are now part of daily existence. From national downfalls of popular cloud platforms to infrastructure failings that render only one specific area offline, companies can no longer rely on uptime as a promise. For organizations with national and international footprints, any downtime, even a second, can ruin reputational standing and render millions of dollars in lost revenue. Therefore, access to content is not a technical consideration but an essential business function. A headless CMS structure with a content delivery network (CDN) facilitates global access so that when one area goes down, the necessary content is still accessible from varied other locations. The very resiliency of channel decoupling for delivery, redundancy, and regionally-aware caching keeps content accessible even when systems fail.
Where Content Availability is Key
The first and largest interaction organizations have with their consumers is their content. They need it, they access it, they trust it, and it converts them. Therefore, when there is an outage, content needs to be available so the consumer can still read FAQs, product offerings, and service specifications. When an organization cannot provide content when it needs to be accessed, it risks losing a sale now and losing trust for years (if not decades). This is especially important for brands that ease internationally.
Operating on separate continents implies access from multiple time zones. Just because one company location is down, does not mean the others should be; it will be marked as inoperable company-wide. Therefore, even if one location has access to the content, the rest of the regions will see that it does not operate reliably. Storyblok integration documentation explains how to configure systems to maintain availability and resilience across global regions. For example, content availability during an outage is crucial in ecommerce, news and media, healthcare and finance.
What Systems are Most at Risk?
Many companies have been using monolithic systems to manage content for years. However, more and more are left at risk as operations go global and outages become more prevalent. Monolithic systems use a central infrastructure or tightly coupled system to deploy either on-prem or in the cloud. When the main datacenter goes down, the entire infrastructure is down. Furthermore, even if a backup system exists as a failover, recovery is complicated, and takes a prolonged time to come back online. In addition, monolithic CMS systems do not scale well to spikes and outages are massive spikes when users are hitting refresh to regain access or get more information about what’s going on. Monolithic systems do not provide flexibility; therefore, those who run them are most vulnerable when resources are unknown due to a crisis. For global enterprises that increase their reach and rely upon international operations, these systems are not equipped to withstand limited access to content.
How Headless CMS Comes With Resilience by Default
Headless CMS comes with resilience by default. Because it exists outside of a traditional content management system where content and delivery are locked inside a delivery mechanism, a headless CMS operates like structured data storage. Content as data lives stored and can be delivered via APIs to any device, platform or channel. This means multiple redundancies exist because content does not live in one place for one application. Furthermore, it can be cached and delivered from many different regions at once so that if anyone one channel goes down, many others go on unaffected. The support of an omnichannel structure means that a business can still reach its customers on the Web, or mobile apps, or kiosks if one delivery vehicle is compromised. If it were instead a tightly coupled architecture, the fragility would be inherent with the tightly connected channels. Thus, with headless CMS, organizations can create their intended project and use the headless architecture to support it while simultaneously knowing that outages will not destroy customer experience.
How CDNs Help Maintain Access During Global Outages
Content delivery networks (CDNs) help provide access during global outages, with or without a headless CMS. A CDN is a proxy network of cache points around the world; therefore, when it goes down, it means every region loses access to the same content as it is all being pulled from the original origin server. But with a CDN architecture, the need to pull from one node is reduced. CDNs cache content from the origin server meaning if outages occur, cached content still exists for the consumer instead of error messages. When a headless CMS is integrated with CDNs, there is even more power because structured content sent via API can be cached at the local level and restored once connections are restored automatically. That’s how when people experience outages, headless architecture with CDNs has allowed them to still access content without any issues for long periods of time. Resilient CDN strategies include load balancing and routing technology that pushes consumers to the best available node anyway; yet with a headless architecture, it transforms an outage from total shutdown to an inconvenience where content is still available.
Outages Don’t Just Prevent Access, They Prevent Business Continuity
Outages don’t just prevent access to a website; they prevent access to a whole business. When content is down, customers can’t find help, there’s no sales waiting room and no communication to investors or stakeholders. A headless CMS ensures business continuity because content that must stay available FAQs, service status pages, compliance language remains available. This is due to structured content being saved in one place but disbursed via APIs; therefore, it can be cached in various regions, and at the least, critical information can be served even when primary offerings go down. The ability to still communicate can save face, provide routing information to customers and ensure that brands are not seen as failures. Instead of organizations being seen as an outage not meeting their customers’ needs, they can show transparency and stability, which ultimately furthers trust over time.
Outages Need To Scale Availability Publishing Workflows During Fail-Safe Scenarios
Fail-safe availability doesn’t necessarily scale with the operations necessary for publishing. Sometimes, you can’t publish because a system is down but the teams with access behind logins and roles could still be creating necessary content and giving customer concerns. With other CMS options, systems go down, and sometimes, the teams are locked out of access they need to publish. A headless architecture affords teams the opportunity to publish offline in certain situations or on degraded platforms with the promise that everything will sync and repopulate once systems are active again. This means that compliance changes that MUST publish or advisories for customers can get published instead of waiting for systems to come back online. In fast-moving industries like finance or news where every second matters and individuals need to know what’s going on (or at least that someone is still there), fail-safe architecture provides the opportunity for teams to get ahead even without full access.
Creating Customer Confidence via Consistency
Trust is one of the hardest things to gain and easiest things to lose on a global business scale. Customers anticipate brands to be present when they need them, regardless of digital outages. When a brand can display its consistency and dependability while everyone else is up and down, it positions itself as a trusted source for success. A headless CMS could generate this reliability as it separates content from less reliable display layers and ensures the delivery method is distributed and redundant. If a brand can remain accessible when the going gets tough, it not only maintains rapport with customers in the moment, but it creates loyal advocates over time. For example, areas where competition is high will value outlets that remain operational during outages much more than those who head for the hills. These brands will have a more trusted reputation than anyone else.
Preparing for Outage Trends Across the Globe
Outages will become more commonplace, if not worse, as more and more systems and applications come online and rely upon one another. Businesses must consider their content development in a strategic fashion that promotes resiliency since they can never tell when the digital skies will fall. For foreseeable outages, headless CMS platforms provide the best opportunities as well as region-aware CDNs and distributed publishing flows.
The freedom allows businesses to explore the shifting landscape of danger. It also fosters low overhead for unexpected spikes in visitors, and redundancy for ongoing access during duress. Content structures require development with outages in mind to work completely- this transcends IT development population across the globe or business relevance. Resiliency must be part of your content architectures today for successful reliability tomorrow.
Avoiding Errors When Outages Happen
When the pressure is on from an outage, mistakes can happen as human error throws a wrench in out already disabled systems. A headless CMS alleviates much of the human error owing to automatic delivery of content adjustments at distributed caches via API versus manual efforts. Anything that requires manual effort can go awry even with low fault tolerance to client facing declarations. The less humans must intervene the better to keep things the same and avoid making matters worse.
Using Analytics to Predict Delivery Vulnerabilities
Resiliency is a proactive measure, instead of one after the fact. Thanks to analytics within headless CMS workflows, companies can rely on the historical data collected to assess delivery success by region and anticipate vulnerabilities before an outage even occurs. For example, latency, cache hit ratios and general health of the server are all metrics that indicate a dilemma with enough time left for teams to adjust. The ability to predict such opportunities not only makes resilience faster when it comes to responding to outages, but also renders it more successful, as organizational resiliency is an always-improving process.
Staying Compliant Amidst Disruptions
One of the byproducts of outages is the risk of non-compliance. Fallback systems may fail to provide the disclaimer, policy or regulated information that a site needs legally to operate. Yet a headless CMS saves the day for engines by integrating compliance features into the architecture itself. Thus, should any cached versions be stored or fallback versions accessed, the legally-required elements remain. Therefore, compliance reigns supreme and organisations don’t have to worry about fines or penalties from governmental regulators, allowing them to hold onto their positional integrity of operators across the globe.
Transparency Provides Confidence Over Deception
Another critical component to avoiding customer disillusionment is transparency; if a company covers up a mistake instead of fessing up, they will lose customers. But with headless CMSes, the ability to maintain communication and continuity across many channels albeit reduced capacity allows these companies to be transparent when times get tough. They should not run from the storm but instead embrace it, empowering their customer base to see how strong they are in spite of challenges. If customers can see that a company communicates with them, even when the system is bogged down, they’ll trust this transparent company for all their future needs.
Conclusion
Global content accessibility requirements during outages are no longer a luxury digital-first companies need this architectural capability to survive. Whether behind closed doors or at the four corners of the Earth, consumers, clients, business partners, and employees expect universal access to content and information at all times. Even the tiniest hiccup can impact stock markets, foster distrust, and result in instant lost revenue and more. Monolithic CMS platforms depend on centralized structures that merely build upon a default system for expected malaise. In other words, systems crash where crashes are expected, resulting in extended outages with costly recovery time. When content is tied to one source, however, it only exposes the company to more disasters that can be avoided with a more malleable solution.
CMS platforms that support a headless approach provide the malleable resilience necessary to ensure global content accessibility continues even during localized (or centralized) disasters. The decoupled delivery and display create a controlled environment where like items are escaping from structured data repositories via APIs to infinitely more channels. Regions do not need to access content from one central hub; they can utilize a headless CMS for decentralized access, providing much greater opportunities for continued accessibility even while disasters occur. In addition, as regions interface with regionally aware CDNs, headless CMS can cache content regionally and globally, making real-time access to up-to-date information from the nearest server without implicating resources that may be strained elsewhere. Maintaining revenue flow during an outage is important for revenue protection, but so is bolstering brand perception during a crisis.
Retention comes from reliability when companies actively keep their digital doors open when others do not. For example, if one company goes down due to instability and another remains status quo, customers will flock to the reliable option and have it in the back of their minds even when the crisis resolves. Resiliency becomes a competitive differentiator when all other options fail. Therefore, a headless CMS can create the environment necessary to ensure reliability branding from consistent delivery.
In a world where downtime is expected, resilient organizations will overcome adversity with the proper architecture from the get-go. The architecture needs to be headless not only to survive the outage but to allow the opportunity to be a reliable force and empowering organization. Building a structural advantage better supports throughput and expectations when organizations put themselves out there for true global engagement.
