On the night of Australia’s first Nationwide Online Retail event, it is no surprise to see many of these websites down and consumers furious.

Dubbed by Couriermail.com.au as, “the sale that crashed the Internet”, it has created a frenzy of consumer backlash with consumers hitting the twittersphere, Facebook and blogging sites airing their frustrations.

This is not the first time we have seen this in Australia or other countries around the world, it seems to occur during most major time critical online events. Who would think this could happen today when technology is so far advanced and the internet is so widely used and understood.

So who is to blame?

Media reports across the country suggests retailers were simply not prepared for the sudden surge of visits. Some furious customers seem to support this view also on Facebook and Twitter. Others blame Cloud Hosting providers for poor infrastructure, bandwidth and old technology.

Having been in the Cloud industry for over 18 years and having been involved in hosting Cloud infrastructure for some of Australia’s largest time critical events, including the prestigious Sydney to Hobart Yacht race which has over 4.5 million unique visitors in a 48 hour period, Anthony Banek, CEO of OzHosting.com states, “There is always a lot of finger pointing from all sides of the fence, the Website owners blame the Cloud Hosting providers, Consumers point the blame at the Website owners, it never seems to end.”

Anthony adds, “It is quite simple, Infrastructure and Technology to support large volume websites require substantial investment and planning. I have seen in these pressure situations, where the campaign is untried or the amount of visitors is unknown, things go really wrong.”

“Very successful Start ups in their early stages really struggle with the cost balance of getting infrastructure to support ambitions. Daily we see customers cutting corners to save dollars, but ultimately the cost of lost revenue can be much greater than the initial perceived cost savings of not having the right planning and infrastructure in the first place.”

“In the majority of cases, it’s not the Cloud Hosting provider who is to blame, but lack of planning, budget and unknown success of the campaign driving traffic to the Website in question.”

“Today with the benefits of Cloud Hosting, website owners can scale their computing power up or down by the minute, so there is no real excuse not to get this right.”