What the AWS Outage Teaches Us and How to Prepare Your Business for Cloud Downtime

The recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage reminded businesses of a hard truth: no cloud platform is immune to downtime. The impact was far-reaching, with high-profile services like Snapchat, Zoom, and the UK government’s HMRC platform all experiencing disruptions. For many companies, this affected operations, customer experience, and revenue.

We spoke with Mollie, one of our Senior Account Managers, who supports clients with cloud strategy, business continuity, and resilience planning. She explained what these AWS outages really teach us and, more importantly, how businesses can prepare for future cloud disruptions.

Practical Tips for Building Cloud Resilience

1. Build a Solid Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

“Have a clear, well-tested disaster recovery plan that defines RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective) targets for your key systems. Know who does what during an outage and rehearse it like a fire drill.”

A structured DRP ensures your team can act fast and minimise downtime when unexpected outages occur.

2. Leverage Azure’s Built-In Resilience Features

“Azure offers geo-redundant storage, availability zones, and automated failover features, so be sure to use them,” Mollie advises.

“We often find clients are paying for these features but haven’t configured them properly or tested them. This is low-hanging fruit.”

By using Azure’s built-in cloud resilience tools, you can reduce risk without adding unnecessary costs.

3. Adopt a Multi-Region or Multi-Cloud Strategy (Where It Makes Sense

“For business-critical workloads, consider spreading risk across multiple regions or providers. That might mean deploying to several Azure regions or running some services across AWS and Azure.”

“It doesn’t have to be expensive; it just needs to be strategic.”

A multi-cloud approach can protect against vendor-specific outages and improve overall reliability.

4. Monitor Proactively, Not Reactively

“Use monitoring tools that alert you before users notice issues. Azure Monitor and Application Insights are great starts, but also look at third-party solutions like Datadog or LogicMonitor if your setup is complex.”

“You can’t respond quickly to what you don’t know is broken.”

Proactive cloud monitoring helps identify performance bottlenecks early, preventing small issues from becoming outages.

5. Communicate Internally and With Customers

“Have a clear communication plan for outages, especially for internal teams and customers. A timely status page update or proactive customer message can protect trust even when services are down.”

Transparent communication helps maintain confidence during incidents and reduces frustration.

Final Thoughts on Cloud Resilience from Mollie

“Outages are stressful, but they don’t have to be chaotic. The businesses that recover fastest are those that prepare before something goes wrong.”

If you’re unsure where to start, our team can audit your cloud environment, identify gaps, and help ensure your business is resilient against the next AWS outage or cloud failure.

Get in touch today to strengthen your cloud continuity strategy and keep your business running.