We decided to explore why so many organizations are still relying on outdated failover methods that were never built for today’s cloud-first, always-on world. So here’s what we found out… To be clear, we didn’t invent failover. We just made it stop breaking everything.
We decided to explore why so many organizations are still relying on outdated failover methods that were never built for today’s cloud-first, always-on world. So here’s what we found out…
To be clear, we didn’t invent failover. We just made it stop breaking everything.
Key Takeaways
This quote reframes everything:
Failover exists. It’s everywhere. But in its current form, it breaks more than it protects.
There’s a surprising truth in modern enterprise networking:
The bigger the company, the more fragile the internet failover.
At face value, that shouldn’t be the case. Large organizations have access to sophisticated IT tools, highly-skilled teams, and enterprise budgets. But when it comes to connectivity—the internet infrastructure that underpins everything from cloud apps and real-time payments to remote access and customer experiences—most are relying on solutions that weren’t built for how business is done today.
From the outside, it looks redundant. Resilient. Rock solid. But under the hood, it’s fragile. Failover happens. The IP changes. Sessions drop. And it costs money.And the costs are real: Thirty-one percent of businesses report that internet outages cost them over $1.2 million annually. That’s not just lost sales—it’s downtime, IT labor, customer frustration, and broken trust.
Ten or fifteen years ago, traditional failover strategies were enough. Businesses were more centralized. Most applications lived on-premise. Cloud adoption was minimal, and mobile access wasn’t mission-critical. If a retail location or clinic lost connectivity for a few minutes, the impact was tolerable.
The demand for uptime just wasn’t what it is today.
But now, everything runs through the cloud:
Today, a single dropped session isn’t a minor annoyance—it’s a failed transaction, a lost medical record update, or a broken customer interaction.
Back then, failover was a safety net. Today, it needs to be invisible. And that’s a completely different level of expectation.
And it’s not just operationally critical. It’s competitive. Eighty percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. Failover that disrupts customer experience is no longer acceptable.
Legacy methods weren’t wrong. They’re just no longer enough.
Let’s explore the most common internet failover strategies still in use, why they often fail at scale, and how SIPA redefines the category of resilient connectivity for modern businesses.
What It Is: BGP is a complex, decades-old protocol that large internet service providers use to route traffic across the internet. When enterprises adopt it, they’re trying to make multiple internet connections look like one seamless service to the outside world.
Why It’s Used: It allows an organization to use more than one ISP while keeping the same static IP address—which is important for keeping systems running during outages.
Why It Fails Most Businesses:
It’s like launching a rocket just to pick up groceries.
For a business with hundreds of locations—say, a retail chain with POS systems at each store—this setup is wildly impractical. Each site would need expensive hardware, static IPs, and dedicated technical support.
There’s always that one guy who set it up in 2016 and swore never to touch it again. That’s your single point of failure.
What It Is: A "dual-WAN" router connects to two internet providers (for example, Comcast and Verizon). If one connection fails, the other kicks in.
Why It Sounds Good: It’s cheap, easy to set up, and gives IT teams confidence that they’ve got a backup in place.
Why It Fails in Practice:
The failover works. The session doesn't. And that's the disconnect.
It’s like being in the middle of a customer checkout and your terminal reboots. You didn’t lose internet—but you lost the sale.
If you're running point-of-sale systems, booking engines, or video calls across multiple locations, every IP change is a potential disruption.
We love LTE. I just don’t trust it to carry my identity. It gets you back online, but it doesn’t keep you connected.
What It Is: Some businesses add LTE or 5G internet (via SIM cards) as a wireless backup. These often run behind NAT, a method that shares one IP address across many devices.
Why It Sounds Smart: It provides a backup that’s immune to cable cuts and local outages. It’s wireless, so it can connect even when primary lines fail.
Why It Still Breaks Things:
You’ve built a really expensive ‘sometimes it works’ system. That’s not resilience. That’s duct tape.
What It Is: SIPA is a new model for internet failover. Instead of tying your IP address to your internet provider, it gives you a static IP address from the cloud that never changes—even when your internet connection does.
Why It Works:
Failover goes from session killer to non-event. Your VPN stays up. Your customer doesn’t notice. And that’s the point.
SIPA is like giving every store or site its own digital passport. You can fly Delta, Southwest, or Spirit. Doesn’t matter. You still land in the same country.
This matters for any company with distributed teams, retail locations, kiosks, or sensitive applications that rely on consistent connectivity.
Connectivity is the foundation of modern business—whether you’re selling coffee, routing packages, or managing cloud-based systems.
Without seamless failover, you're exposed to:
SIPA aligns with what executives care about:
We didn’t invent failover. We just made it stop breaking everything.
Most businesses don’t need more internet. They need a smarter internet.
Failover isn’t about having a second connection. It’s about keeping your business running without anyone noticing there was ever a problem.
SIPA is built for today’s internet-driven economy: cloud-based, always-on, and distributed across locations.
Let’s stop settling for failover that fails. Let’s make the internet unbreakable.
Need help evaluating your current setup? Our team would love to dive in with you—whether you're managing 3 locations or 3,000. Let's talk.
