It has become intolerable over the past few months for business in SL. It has cost business millions, if not billions in L$.
Why? Because LL fail to get stability as their number ONE priority. The trends from their own stats and metrics show what an abismal state this platform is in. If this we not considered a 'Game' by many, then LL would have gone bust a long time ago.
The up and coming OpenSim platforms are gaining ground rapidly, whilst not perfect, they at least put stability on their number one slot, forgoing ingame voice, media and even micro economy layers in some of them (although they are working on it or have already done it). All of which are easily overcome by using 3rd party software. Their focus, and rightly so, has been to get their platforms working well and stable. This alone is not giving them the edge.
People fed up after years of poor performance from LL are leaving in droves and setting up in other platforms. Indeed, some have created their own platforms. For the most part they are cheaper (between 45-80 USD a month, no setup fees for a region (sim)) and have greater capacity such as 45,000+ prim limits, some allow upto 256x256x256 big prims as standard. Most have signed up with SLInventory and you can upload all your goods (not ones you don't have trans/copy rights on) and get started right away.
With the new ability to link directly to SL it wont be long before those grids are 'the place to be', especially due to the constant lag and rollbacks, restarts, even blocked loggins by LL. You can login on the linked grids and start your business, only now and again popping over to SL grids (assuming they are up) to pick something or someone, before getting back to a more stable and useful platform.
LL have been warned over and over about what should/must be their top priority, but it would seem they have their goals set elsewhere, so be it.