October 21st, 2025
When the Cloud Stumbles, So Does the Internet
On October 20, 2025, a massive outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted thousands of websites and applications around the world including major platforms like Fortnite, Snapchat, and Roblox. The incident began in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region, one of the largest and most heavily relied upon data centers in the world. Within minutes, the ripple effect was felt globally, as countless businesses found their websites, databases, and customer portals suddenly unreachable.
This outage serves as a powerful reminder: no matter how large or advanced a provider may be, the cloud is not infallible. And when millions of businesses depend on the same infrastructure, one technical failure can bring a large portion of the internet to a standstill.
The Problem with Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket
Over the past decade, the convenience and scalability of cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have convinced many organizations to migrate their entire infrastructure online. While that model has its benefits, it also creates a single point of failure both technically and strategically.
When a provider like AWS experiences downtime, even for a few hours, the results can be catastrophic for businesses that rely on it exclusively:
- Lost revenue: E-commerce websites and SaaS platforms instantly lose transactions and customers when their systems go offline.
- Damaged reputation: Customers expect 24/7 availability. Frequent outages erode trust, even if the root cause isn’t your fault.
- Operational paralysis: Businesses that rely on cloud-hosted email, databases, or authentication systems find their teams unable to work.
- Dependency risk: The more services you integrate into a single cloud provider, the more difficult it becomes to recover or migrate when issues arise.
Even major corporations are vulnerable. During this outage, numerous global services were taken offline, demonstrating that centralization, not decentralization, has become the web’s greatest weakness.
Colocation: A Smarter, More Resilient Alternative
At Sectorlink, we believe the key to reliability lies in diversification and control. Rather than being completely dependent on a third-party cloud, colocation gives you dedicated physical infrastructure, your own servers, housed in our secure data centers. This hybrid model offers the flexibility of the cloud with the reliability and transparency of on-premises systems.
Here’s why colocation makes sense in today’s cloud-heavy world:
- True Ownership: Your servers are your property. You control the hardware, operating system, and configuration without being locked into a vendor’s ecosystem.
- Predictable Performance: Your systems aren’t sharing resources with thousands of other clients. You get consistent, dedicated performance and bandwidth.
- Redundant Infrastructure: Sectorlink’s facilities feature redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity, ensuring uptime even during hardware or utility failures.
- Multi-Cloud Connectivity: Colocation doesn’t mean isolation. Many businesses colocate critical systems and still connect to AWS or other cloud providers, gaining flexibility while avoiding dependency.
- Local Access & Support: Our Michigan-based data centers provide direct access, transparent operations, and experienced in-house support that global cloud providers simply can’t match.
Learning from the AWS Outage
The lesson from today’s outage is simple: convenience should never come at the cost of resilience. The cloud can fail and when it does, the consequences extend far beyond a temporary glitch. Businesses that prioritize uptime and customer trust should always maintain redundancy, whether through multiple cloud providers or a mix of cloud and colocation infrastructure.
By placing critical systems in a colocation facility, you regain control over your data, your operations, and your continuity strategy. You also gain peace of mind knowing your business can continue running even when large-scale cloud services go dark.
Build a Balanced Strategy for Your Business
Outages like this one are not a one-time event. Similar disruptions have occurred at major providers nearly every year and as more businesses shift online, the impact of each outage grows larger. Sectorlink helps you design a balanced infrastructure that protects you from single-provider failures while optimizing cost and performance.
If your organization depends entirely on one cloud provider, now is the time to rethink your strategy. Colocation can complement or replace your current setup giving you flexibility, security, and redundancy without the risks of total dependence.
Final Thoughts
The internet’s resilience depends on diversity. No one provider, not even Amazon, can guarantee perfect uptime. But with a smarter approach to infrastructure, businesses can safeguard their operations and their customers against inevitable disruptions.
Sectorlink’s colocation services give you control, reliability, and confidence in your infrastructure without sacrificing flexibility. Don’t wait for the next big outage to expose your vulnerabilities. Contact our team today to explore how we can help you diversify, protect, and future-proof your systems.