Cloud Computing

2025-10-21

When I woke up to start my work day on Monday I noticed that Jira, our workplace management system was having server diffulties. I couldn't view my assigned work from that morning or review the previous weeks work that my co-worker had supplied over the weekend. I thought nothing much till I tried to launch Tidal, my music streaming platform only to find that they too were also down. +++

It wasn't too long afterwards that I was informed from my co-workers that AWS (Amazon Web Services) was down and alongside it a number of our internal and external integrations had been affected. The outage lasted hours.

AWS cloud services account for around 20-30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, that means that when AWS goes down then Doulingo, Epic Games, Adobe Creative Cloud, Square, Tidal, Jira, GoDaddy, and Hinge, just to name a handful; they ALL go down. So I raise the question, why are we consilidating our techologies on central services only to risk critical server outages. We're building our systems on shaky foundations.

Think of the crowdstrike outage that affected microsoft devices worldwide just a year ago! Nearly 9 million computers were taken out just like that. Airplanes were cancelled and stock markets crashed. Critical governmental and emergency services were affected. All because of one bad piece of code that was released. This personally affected us at work last year causing quite a headache.

The whole concept of cloud services strikes a nerve with me as well. These large corporations (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) has so much power to control the competetion. If you were to create a new web product you are essentially locked into using cloud services to get started. They offer the lowest prices to early adopters, allowing you to get started quickly. IF your product succeeds then you are essentially locked into your provider, all while they scale your monthly storage and maintenence costs. If you want to swap providers, then you pay out a fee, if you weren't already locked it by tech debt.

Trying to setup on-premise hosting is near impossible as startups don't want to pay expensive up-front hard costs to host their software. It's a preditory system that incentivises you to choose the cheaper, frankly more competitive offer. It offloads the enviromental inpact of data centers onto the providers as well, obscuring the real world impact of big data.

But the consumer doesn't have an input in this equation. We as consumers should be worried about the consolidation of big tech, this means highten security risks, invasion of privacy and less competition. Our entire electronic world is held together by one big tangled knot, and if someone finds an exploit than we will suffer the consequenses.

I end this piece without the ability to provide a meaningful solution, but I think it's disingenious that these corporations are trying to consolidate instead of diversify, to expand the ability to integrate into many different platforms. To build a robust ecosystem of many players that serve the consumer AND developer's interest. To build a lasting, secure and reliable internet for everyone.