Core Insights - Walmart's app and website experienced an outage on December 30, affecting over 6,500 customers, with approximately 75% of users reporting issues with the mobile app and others facing problems on the website [2][3] Group 1: Outage Impact - The outage occurred during a critical time for eCommerce, highlighting the importance of high uptime standards, often referred to as "five nines" or 99.999% uptime, which has become essential for businesses [3][4] - Customers reported difficulties in checking out, indicating a significant disruption in service that could impact sales and customer satisfaction [2] Group 2: Industry Context - The year has seen several notable outages across various sectors, including disruptions to AWS and Cloudflare, which affected numerous online services, emphasizing the growing reliance on stable digital infrastructure [4] - Companies are increasingly evaluated not just on innovation but also on their operational reliability, with uptime becoming a critical metric for success in finance, commerce, and technology [4][5] Group 3: Expert Opinions - Industry experts emphasize the importance of platform resiliency and business continuity planning as key factors in maintaining operational success, with some companies achieving 100% uptime [5][6] - The financial implications of downtime are significant, as even a few minutes of outage can lead to millions of dollars in lost transactions for payment processing businesses [5]