A major Salesforce outage disrupted businesses around the world on September 16, just as thousands of technology professionals gathered for the second day of Dreamforce 2026. At the same time, Google Drive experienced its own service disruption, highlighting how quickly cloud-service problems can affect businesses that depend on online platforms every day.
For businesses, the incidents are a reminder that having cloud-based technology does not eliminate IT risk. KIS Technologies Inc. helps businesses build more resilient IT environments through managed IT services, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, backup, and business continuity planning.
What Happened During the Salesforce Outage?
Salesforce experienced a significant service disruption beginning at approximately 7:50 a.m. UTC on September 16. According to Salesforce’s official status report, customers across multiple regions experienced severe delays, intermittent errors, and difficulty accessing some services, while some customers were also unable to create support cases.
The company initially investigated requests that were stalling while waiting for a response from an internal login service. Salesforce later reported that increased load on a core system component was limiting its ability to process requests.
Engineers tested a fix on a separate instance before beginning a fleetwide rollout. Salesforce reported that customers began seeing services return to normal as the rollout progressed, although some disruption continued during the recovery process.
The timing attracted additional attention because the incident occurred during Dreamforce 2026, Salesforce’s major annual conference in San Francisco. The event is bringing together technology professionals and businesses while Salesforce showcases developments across its enterprise software and artificial intelligence ecosystem.
Google Drive Also Experienced an Outage
Salesforce was not the only major technology platform experiencing problems that day. Google Drive also experienced a separate service disruption on September 16.
According to the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, the Google Drive incident lasted approximately 37 minutes before being marked resolved.
While the Salesforce and Google incidents were separate events, experiencing disruptions from two major cloud platforms around the same period reinforces a practical concern for businesses: critical operations can become dependent on services that are outside the company’s direct control.
Why Cloud Outages Matter to Businesses
Cloud Services Are Not Automatically Risk-Free
Moving applications, files, communication, and business systems to the cloud can provide flexibility and scalability, but it does not guarantee uninterrupted availability.
Businesses can still experience problems caused by service outages, authentication failures, connectivity issues, software problems, third-party dependencies, or configuration errors. Even when a provider resolves an incident relatively quickly, the operational impact can continue afterward.
This is why businesses should consider how dependent their daily operations are on individual platforms and whether they have appropriate backup processes in place.
KIS Technologies’ cloud services provide businesses with managed cloud solutions designed to support cloud infrastructure, migration, security, and ongoing IT operations.
Business Continuity Should Extend Beyond the Cloud
A business continuity strategy should answer a straightforward question: what happens if an important technology service becomes unavailable?
For example, if employees cannot access a cloud-based CRM, businesses may need alternative processes for accessing customer information, recording sales activity, communicating internally, or continuing customer support.
A reliable data recovery and backup strategy can also help protect critical information when systems experience failures or other unexpected incidents. Backups do not prevent a third-party outage, but they can form an important part of a broader recovery strategy.
How Businesses Can Prepare for Service Disruptions
Identify Critical Technology Dependencies
Businesses should identify the applications and cloud services that are essential to daily operations. This can include CRM platforms, Microsoft 365, accounting software, file storage, communication systems, payment platforms, and industry-specific applications.
Understanding these dependencies makes it easier to determine what happens if one service becomes unavailable.
Protect the Network and Endpoints
Cloud resilience also depends on the systems employees use to access those services. A business with secure networks, protected endpoints, strong authentication, and ongoing monitoring can reduce other technology risks surrounding a cloud outage.
KIS Technologies provides cybersecurity solutions that can help businesses address threats involving networks, endpoints, email, and other parts of their IT environment.
Businesses can also review their firewall and network security to ensure employees have secure and reliable connectivity when accessing cloud applications.
Have a Recovery Plan Before an Outage Happens
Waiting until an outage occurs to determine what employees should do can create additional confusion. Businesses should establish clear procedures for communicating with employees, accessing backups, continuing essential operations, and contacting IT support.
A managed IT provider can also monitor systems, help identify dependencies, and assist with recovery planning before an incident becomes a larger operational problem.
The Bigger Lesson From the Dreamforce Outage
The Salesforce and Google Drive incidents demonstrate that even major technology providers can experience service interruptions. The objective for businesses should not necessarily be to eliminate every possible technology failure, but to understand where their vulnerabilities exist and prepare for situations where an important service becomes temporarily unavailable.
Cloud technology remains an important part of modern business infrastructure, but resilience requires more than simply moving systems online. Businesses need appropriate cybersecurity, backups, network protection, monitoring, recovery procedures, and a plan for maintaining operations when a critical service is disrupted.
For companies reviewing their technology infrastructure after recent cloud outages, managed IT services can provide a structured way to evaluate existing systems, identify technology risks, and develop a more resilient IT environment.