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The first I heard of this was yesterday when Chargebee (our subscription billing provider) responded to a support request saying that they're running a skeleton

by aidos 11y ago

The first I heard of this was yesterday when Chargebee (our subscription billing provider) responded to a support request saying that they're running a skeleton staff and only dealing with urgent issues. A couple of hours later they then went on to help me out anyway (they have amazing support for anyone who hasn't dealt with them). It's made me stop and think a little about the vulnerability of the services you rely on to run your business. The situation could have been different and they could have been put out of action temporarily or permanently. It's all too easy to ignore the risk of services going down (for whatever reason) when you're doing your evaluations. In this case I'd still use chargebee in a heartbeat but I do need to put something in place to snapshot all my billing data from their system on a regular basis (thankfully they make it very easy). Horrible situation for those involved (my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones) and I wish the region a speedy recovery.

skrish 11y ago
Thank you. Krish, cofounder of Chargebee here. We were worried about couple of team members who were specifically in areas that were worst affected but glad to know that everyone of them is safe. Thanks to distributed infrastructure the services were at 100% and we had DR plans in place. But support wasn't very distributed. Lessons learnt. Having our San Francisco team member onboard was very helpful to get to urgent call back requests but still limited. Some of us stayed in office to provide support, as it was one of the safest places with power backup for weeks for such eventualities, internet and most importantly food. We also had a few folks who needed a safe place to stay. As a critical infrastructure provider we do have our disaster recovery & business continuity plans, but thankfully the service availability was not affected. But I think it is equally important to ensure we distribute team more globally as we continue to grow, so that data safety & availability is not dependent on what you as a customer plan for, rather something we have also baked-in as part of service. Thank you for the support and shoutout. Cheers.

by aidos 11y ago

skrish 11y ago

Thank you. Krish, cofounder of Chargebee here. We were worried about couple of team members who were specifically in areas that were worst affected but glad to know that everyone of them is safe. Thanks to distributed infrastructure the services were at 100% and we had DR plans in place. But support wasn't very distributed. Lessons learnt. Having our San Francisco team member onboard was very helpful to get to urgent call back requests but still limited. Some of us stayed in office to provide support, as it was one of the safest places with power backup for weeks for such eventualities, internet and most importantly food. We also had a few folks who needed a safe place to stay. As a critical infrastructure provider we do have our disaster recovery & business continuity plans, but thankfully the service availability was not affected. But I think it is equally important to ensure we distribute team more globally as we continue to grow, so that data safety & availability is not dependent on what you as a customer plan for, rather something we have also baked-in as part of service. Thank you for the support and shoutout. Cheers.