AWS’ dominance in cloud infrastructure is risky business

It was hard to miss the major outage that Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered earlier this week – and whilst there’s still speculation about the cause of the issue, there’s no doubt about the impact it had across the globe. From banking apps and airline check-ins to smart home devices and gaming platforms, millions of people around the world were affected, including me. 

But this wasn’t just a technical hiccup. It was another reminder about the dangers of dominance in cloud provision – a service that is becoming increasingly essential in today’s modern digital economy.

According to visualcapitalist.com, AWS controls 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market and its services are deeply embedded in our day-to-day digital life, powering everything from startups and SMEs to multinational corporations and governments. Whilst its scale brings efficiency and innovation, it can also create a risky concentration of power because when AWS goes down (even at one site in Virginia like this week), a vast majority of the internet goes down with it. 

There is competition, but the second- and third-largest providers (Microsoft Azure with 20% of the market and Google holding 13%) are also US-based companies. As with any industry, when one country dominates, other countries need to consider the consequences to data sovereignty and national security. 

So, what can be done?

In the short to medium term, crisis-averse organisations with a lot at stake, like banks and airlines, should think about adopting multi-cloud resilience strategies. This would avoid over-reliance on one cloud provider and potentially mitigate the consequences of outages – meaning less of an impact on customers and end users. 

Beyond that, and as the landscape continues to mature, regulators must ensure there is sufficient competitive and reliable cloud provision. Until now, speed and scale have been key factors in growing the UK’s digital economy but now we must consider how we protect the country’s digital infrastructure, data sovereignty and national security.