When Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage on 20 October 2025, much of the digital world felt the tremor, even here in Ireland. While most Irish businesses and agencies weren’t directly affected, the disruption was a sharp reminder of how interconnected the online ecosystem has become. From e-commerce platforms to analytics tools, so many of the services we use daily depend on the same cloud backbone.
The outage began in AWS’s US-East-1 region, but its effects rippled across Europe. Many Irish companies, including banks, logistics providers and media platforms, rely on tools hosted in those data centres. By mid-morning, DownDetector was logging thousands of complaints from Irish users, and several campaign and analytics tools showed short-lived performance issues while AWS restored services.
Although the disruption was resolved within hours, it raised valuable questions about resilience. According to the IDA, more than 70 per cent of Ireland’s enterprise software and digital services now run on major cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. That means even the most creative and agile agencies are connected to the same global infrastructure.
No alarm bells, just perspective. Having a plan for communication, access and data continuity can help when things beyond our control go sideways. The AWS incident was less a crisis and more a quiet nudge, reminding us that even in a creative industry, the strongest ideas still need solid foundations.
