Publish date: 20.10.25

Today, millions of users across the world woke up to something we’ve all come to dread: a massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage. The disruption, which began in the early hours of the morning and centred on the US-EAST-1 region, rippled across the internet, impacting everything from Amazon.com and Alexa to Fortnite, Canva, Snapchat, Coinbase, Venmo, and even major UK banks like Lloyds and Halifax.

The Wake-Up Call for Businesses

While AWS works to resolve the issue — reportedly linked to DNS resolution failures affecting the DynamoDB API — businesses are left scrambling to manage customer expectations, service interruptions, and lost productivity.

At first glance, it’s just “another outage.” But for those who depend heavily on cloud infrastructure, it’s much more than that. It’s a wake-up call.

The Ripple Effect on Businesses

AWS powers a significant portion of the global digital economy, so when it experiences issues, the effects are widespread. From online retail to financial services, SaaS applications to logistics, organisations are seeing:

  • Revenue loss from downtime and transaction errors.
  • Customer frustration as apps, websites, and logins fail.
  • Operational disruption as employees lose access to key systems.
  • Brand reputation damage due to prolonged unavailability.

For many organisations, the question isn’t whether the cloud will fail—but when, and how prepared they’ll be when it does.

Lessons in Resilience

At Xeretec, we work with businesses across the UK and Europe to help them build IT systems that perform reliably, even when their cloud providers experience issues. Today’s outage highlights three key lessons for every IT leader:

  • Avoid single-cloud dependency: A multi-cloud or hybrid approach reduces the impact when one provider falters.
  • Prioritise visibility: Monitoring and analytics tools give IT teams the insight they need to respond quickly during outages.
  • Plan for continuity: True resilience is about rerouting, recovering, and continuing to operate—even when the unexpected happens.
How Xeretec Helps Build Smarter IT

Businesses that thrive during outages aren’t lucky—they’re prepared. At Xeretec, we help organisations strengthen their digital resilience through:

  • Hybrid cloud strategies that balance on-premise control with cloud flexibility.
  • Proactive monitoring and analytics for early detection of performance issues.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery planning that keeps teams online.
  • Secure, connected digital workflows that maintain productivity across devices and locations.

The cloud can fail. Your business shouldn’t. With the right hybrid IT approach, outages become disruptions—not disasters.

Strategic Takeaways for IT Leaders
  • Assess your dependencies: Identify which systems rely entirely on AWS or similar single providers.
  • Invest in observability: Tools that deliver real-time performance data are critical during outages.
  • Build redundancy: Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments ensure business continuity.
  • Partner for resilience: Work with IT providers like Xeretec who can design, implement, and manage hybrid environments that minimise downtime.
Final Word

Today’s AWS outage is a reminder that no system, however vast, is infallible. The businesses that will emerge stronger are those that prioritise resilience, visibility, and smart IT design.

If your organisation was affected—or if you want to ensure you’re prepared for next time—our cloud and IT specialists can help you build a roadmap toward a more robust, hybrid infrastructure.

Get in touch with Xeretec’s IT & Cloud Services team to discuss how we can help future-proof your infrastructure against outages like today’s.