India depends on cloud services for education and startup ecosystems

AWS Outage and the Digital Backbone

The big cloud outage hit global internet access hard. It wasn’t just a glitch for a few apps; it was a wake-up call about how much our daily online life rests on a few big players. AWS’s domain name system problem halted many services, and DownDetector logged over 1.1 crore reports—that’s “over 11 million” in plain talk. Apps like Snapchat, Roblox, Robinhood, and even big brand sites felt the pinch. Even education platforms like Canvas, used by 50% of North American college students, slowed to a crawl.

What happened? A technical issue knocked the DNS—the thing that translates website addresses into internet locations. Without it, even familiar sites can’t be found. Amazon said they were working toward a full resolution, but the episode made something clear: our online world runs on fragile ties between a handful of providers. This isn’t the first time such a hiccup happened; in 2021 there was a five-hour outage too. Experts say these events usually end in hours, but they expose a big risk: a single point of failure in a highly connected system.

What does this mean for India? It’s a reminder that as more services move to the cloud, our own digital life becomes more exposed to global tech giants. It’s not about demonizing AWS—it’s about thinking smarter about resilience. India can push for a multi-cloud approach, build more local resilience, and make DNS and network infrastructure robust enough to handle disruptions. In simple words: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The outage should spark a policy and business push toward stronger connectivity, better redundancy, and smarter cloud strategies that keep schools, businesses, and everyday users online.