The Register reported that popular business ISP ClaraNet was down since early morning on April 3rd and estimated that that email service would be out until sometime late the following day at the earliest. ClaraNet said that service was partially restored – users could send and recieve email but c0uld not access any emails stored in their inboxes. The ISP say no emails have been lost.

          According to ClaraNet’s support site, incoming mail has not been lost, but is queued waiting to be delivered. The firm apologised for the inconvenience and targeted 6pm tomorrow for the restoration of full service.

The company has not publically explained the reason for the outage but some sources speculate that it was related to a failed RAID controller. Outages do happen, and it’s a good reminder to always have some sort of backup system in place just in case so that you can continue business as usual. Like electricity, you never realize just how much you depend on email until you’re suddenly cut off from it!

Another thing to remember in case of an outage is to communicate with your customers and vendors. Placing a notice on your website and/or on your company’s automated phone system is a good idea. A little communication goes a long way in building customer confidence and loyalty!

CNN is reporting that the White House is in a state of mild chaos thanks to the crash of its Outlook mail server:

Obama press staffers had just made the leap to their official White House e-mail addresses Monday morning when the Outlook server went down. They weren’t the only ones affected by the crash, which also hit the first lady’s office and other White House offices.

An apologetic Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at a 1:30 p.m. press briefing that the server meltdown was responsible for the delay in responding to their e-mailed questions.

It’s unknown what exactly caused the server to crash or when email service will be restored. Unbelievably it appears that there was no back up server or contingency plan in place for such an event. With a new technologically saavy president in the White Housel, you can be sure that will soon be changing!