Raphael Seebacher and Christof Gerber, Open Systems AG
What do you do when your SaaS provider unexpectedly goes out of business?
It's the early days of 2023 when the provider of a critical component in our Web Proxy service announces that it just went out of business. With services used by 100 customers with 300K daily users across 3'500 locations worldwide at stake, we knew that it was time for swift action.
Join us in this talk as Raphi, the crisis lead, and Christof, engineer on the Web Security team, recount their experience handling this crisis. We will take you from the dizziness of the initial shock to our first hour, first day, first week, and first month actions, detailing leadership, communication, and technical responses and the trade-off decisions we faced.
You'll leave this talk with another tale from production and practical ideas to make your own organisation better prepared for a similar unexpected crisis.
Raphael Seebacher, Open Systems AG
Raphael is a systems engineer who spent the last decade exploring the Engineer/Manager pendulum at Open Systems. He holds a MSc in electrical engineering and information technology, a MAS in Management, Technology and Economics and is a captain in the Swiss Armed Forces. His interests include amateur radio, the outdoors, and tinkering with all kinds of hardware and software systems.
Christof Gerber, Open Systems AG
Christof is an engineer who develops, maintains, and operates Software as a Service to secure corporate web traffic worldwide. Working at the intersection of computer networks, IT security, and software engineering, he is passionate about building reliable systems for Linux servers and Kubernetes.
author = {Raphael Seebacher and Christof Gerber},
title = {When Your {SaaS} Provider Goes out of Business {\textendash} Lessons from an Averted Crisis},
year = {2024},
address = {Dublin},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = oct
}
