The impact of the AWS outage has reminded many businesses of the risk for businesses that rely heavily on centralised cloud infrastructure, especially when so many essential services are concentrated in a single region.
But at the wider industry level, this is also a warning around the widespread lack of contingency planning for cloud failures. Reactive response must give way to strategically planned disaster recovery protocols that engender a resilient cloud market.
Building a Competitive and Resilient Cloud Market
Encouragingly, many organisations are already moving away from dependence on a single public cloud provider. Recent research from Pulsant reveals that 87% of businesses plan to partially or fully repatriate workloads over the next two years—up from 43% in 2021, according to Barclays.
This shift isn’t driven by resilience alone. Cost savings, performance improvements, lower latency, and greater control, especially when hosting closer to end users, are all contributing factors.
However, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently concluded that AWS and Microsoft hold dominant market positions, which may hinder competition. Technical barriers and high costs associated with transferring data between providers make it difficult for customers to switch or adopt multi-cloud strategies.
The AWS outage shows that this duopoly and dominance create huge risk. There is a pressing need for a regulatory framework that encourages diversity in cloud options. UK organisations should be empowered to choose services that best meet their needs, whether domestic or global. This means investing in UK-based infrastructure while ensuring access to international platforms. The focus should be on clear data governance standards, paired with flexible compliance pathways.
Resilience should not be a headache
True resilience requires workloads to span colocation, private infrastructure, and public cloud. Colocation sites provide critical support when primary facilities fail. They offer regional diversity, robust physical security, and the connectivity needed to bridge private systems with cloud platforms.
While this hybrid approach offers flexibility, it can complicate recovery. One platform might back up every five minutes, another every four hours. Without a unified recovery strategy, the slowest system sets the pace.
Consistency is the biggest challenge in hybrid recovery. Disparate recovery points across platforms can undermine the entire plan and add to the management burden.
Conclusion: infrastructure must reflect business needs
The AWS outage was not just a technical hiccup – it was a reminder that businesses are critically dependent upon their infrastructure. It showed that resilience isn’t just about uptime – technical agility, diversity, and preparedness should also be considered. As businesses plan for 2026 and beyond, the imperative must be to build recovery into their digital architecture, embrace multi-platform strategies, and advocate for a cloud ecosystem that’s competitive, flexible, and future-ready.