On Monday, millions of people across the world were reminded just how dependent we’ve become on invisible infrastructure. A simple Domain Name System (DNS) error in Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing backbone behind much of the modern internet, took down thousands of websites, apps, and even government services for hours.
From Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland’s online banking platforms to Snapchat, Reddit, and Ring doorbells, everyday life briefly glitched. HMRC customers were told to “try again later.” Even smart homes went dumb as Alexa and Ring devices stopped working.
What began at 7:40am UK time on October 20 rippled globally, affecting over 2,000 companies and millions of users. AWS eventually restored service by late evening, but the knock-on effects were felt well into the next day, a potent reminder that when the cloud goes down, so too does much of modern society.
The Weak Link in the Digital Chain
AWS isn’t just a service provider; it’s the service provider. Since 2016, it’s won 189 UK government contracts worth £1.7 billion, serving critical departments like the Home Office, HMRC, DWP, the Ministry of Justice, and the Cabinet Office. The scale of reliance is staggering and, as this week’s outage showed, risky.
For years, regulators such as the FCA and PRA have warned of “concentration risk” in the cloud sector: too much critical infrastructure in the hands of too few providers. The Treasury and regulators have even proposed designating hyperscalers like AWS as “critical third parties”, subjecting them to greater oversight. Yet the UK government itself is among Amazon’s biggest customers. That’s not just ironic; it’s contradictory.
The Dominance of the Big Three
According to Synergy Research Group, as reported by Statista, the global cloud infrastructure market is now effectively controlled by just three players: Amazon Web Services (30%), Microsoft Azure (20%), and Google Cloud (13%).
Together, these “Big Three” command over 60% of the worldwide cloud market, leaving the remaining competitors to battle for single-digit share.
The overall market is vast, global cloud infrastructure spending hit $99 billion in Q2 2025, up 25% year-on-year, and is expected to surpass $400 billion for the full year. Much of this explosive growth is being fueled by the AI boom and the enormous computing power it demands.
But such dominance comes at a cost. When just three companies underpin so much of the world’s digital infrastructure, any technical failure, or strategic decision, has global consequences. The convenience of scale quickly turns into a systemic vulnerability.
And It’s Not Just Amazon
Barely ten days before the AWS crash, Microsoft Azure, cloud’s second biggest giant, suffered its own major outage. On October 9, 2025, millions of users were suddenly locked out of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Azure, and even Minecraft.
Emails failed to send, video meetings collapsed mid-call, and businesses that rely on Microsoft’s ecosystem found themselves paralysed. Microsoft acknowledged the disruption and “scrambled to find a fix,” but the damage to confidence was already done.
This wasn’t an isolated glitch, it was the latest in a string of recurring Azure reliability failures that have raised serious questions about whether any single provider can realistically deliver “always-on” services at global scale.
Two of the world’s largest cloud providers, AWS and Microsoft, both suffering major outages in the same month, should serve as a flashing red warning light. It shows that the problem isn’t which cloud we choose, it’s that we’ve built our world to depend on any one of them.
Digital by Default — But at What Cost?
These incidents raise serious questions about the UK government’s “digital by default” ambitions, especially around critical infrastructure and the proposed national digital ID scheme.
How can we promise seamless, secure digital public services when:
a) We cannot guarantee uptime or access – hyperscaler outages can lock out millions overnight.
b) We cannot guarantee security – every centralised digital system creates a new single point of failure.
A digital ID or public service platform that citizens can’t access because AWS (or Azure or Google) goes down is not resilience, its dependence disguised as progress.
Resilience Requires Diversity
If we’ve learned anything from recent outages, it’s this: resilience is built on diversity. Relying solely on one hyperscaler might seem efficient, but it introduces a huge point of vulnerability.
That’s why many forward-thinking organisations are embracing multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies, where workloads are distributed across different providers and environments. It’s about ensuring continuity when – not if – one provider fails.
And this is where trusted, specialist providers like vXtream play a crucial role.
• Smaller, more agile partners bring something the hyperscalers can’t:
• Personalised service – direct access to engineers who know your systems.
• Proactive monitoring and support – not just dashboards and ticket numbers.
• Flexibility to tailor architectures that suit specific operational, compliance, and data sovereignty needs.
In short, they offer the human resilience and responsiveness that’s missing from hyperscale operations.
Why Trusted, Attentive Providers Make the Difference
While global giants chase scale, smaller cloud and infrastructure partners like vXtream focus on reliability, transparency, and client trust. When something breaks, there’s no faceless support queue or generic status page, there’s a human being who understands the business impact and acts fast.
That agility and attention to detail are critical for organisations building robust digital strategies. True resilience isn’t about never going down; it’s about recovering quickly, communicating clearly, and designing systems that keep working when part of the stack fails.
vXtream’s model – trusted, flexible, and client-centric – demonstrates how smaller, specialised providers can coexist with hyperscalers, providing an essential safety net and alternative pathway. This balance is what gives organisations genuine control over their digital destiny.
Conclusion: The Cloud Needs a Safety Net
The AWS and Microsoft outages of October 2025 will fade from the headlines within days. But their implications should not. They expose a deeper truth: our digital infrastructure is only as strong as its weakest link, and right now, those links run through a handful of companies’ data centres.
If the UK is serious about building a secure, resilient digital state – one capable of withstanding both cyberattacks and cloud outages – then dependency on a small number of global tech giants is a risk we can no longer afford to ignore.
Diversification, local expertise, and trusted partnerships with providers like vXtream aren’t just optional extras, they’re essential elements of a resilience-first strategy for the digital age.
When your organisation’s digital future depends on staying connected, resilient, and responsive, don’t leave it all in one provider’s hands.
Talk to us today about how a trusted, hybrid-cloud strategy can strengthen your resilience, safeguard continuity, and keep your business running, no matter what happens in the hyperscale clouds.
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