AWS and Azure Outages: What Happened and How to Protect Your Business
Have you ever wondered what happens when the entire Internet's backbone goes out? When Amazon Website Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure go down, the effects ripple across the entire internet. From payroll systems to eCommerce sites, even a brief outage can paralyze operations.
In October 2025, AWS experienced a large-scale disruption that reminded businesses everywhere just how dependent we’ve become on the cloud.
At Certum Solutions, we help organizations plan for moments like these, so when the cloud crashes, your business keeps running. In a recent YouTube video by Sam, Consultant II at Certum Solutions, he briefly explains what happened between them and some steps that you can take to mitigate the risk associated with a failure like this.
Is your business protected? Book a free consultation for expert help today.
What Are AWS and Azure? (And Why Should You Care?)
Let's start with the basics.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is a comprehensive cloud computing platform that provides on-demand IT resources like computing power, storage, and databases over the Internet. It's ran and hosted at data centers operated by Amazon.
Azure (Microsoft Azure)
Azure is essentially the same thing (or very similar to it) but it's Microsoft's version of cloud computing infrastructure.
Who Uses These Services?
Both run huge, huge websites. You might recognize some of these:
Banking systems
Airline reservation systems
Major enterprise applications
These are just some of the larger ones off the top of our head, as well as many other applications that you might use for your business purposes. Very large, very important websites run off of these platforms. There's a good chance that you are knowingly or unknowingly using them right now. In fact, some figures suggest that AWS handles over 30% of web traffic. That means your business probably has something running on there.
The AWS Outage: What Happened?
So, the first outage that we had was the AWS outage.
Amazon's Explanation
Amazon explained this by saying that customers weren't able to connect to what it calls its DynamoDB database. This is a database system where AWS customers store data, and they were unable to connect due to a latent defect in the server's automated DNS (Domain Name System) management system.
What Does That Actually Mean?
So essentially what that means is that the system that maintains records of the domain name system had a problem. The Domain Name System takes the URL that you put in and translates it to an IP address, so the systems know who they're talking to.
A Simple Analogy
You can look at it in simple terms: If you are someone who speaks English and you are speaking to someone who speaks Arabic, you might not understand each other.
That's essentially what happened with this system. Two different languages were trying to talk and they couldn't understand each other, and they didn't know how to translate it.
As you can imagine, that would cause some issues.
The Response
So, what happens whenever these situations occur, or what the usual course of action is, systems get taken offline and services get reduced so they can fix the issue without it becoming worse. That outage lasted about a full day.
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The Azure Outage: A Different Problem
Then our next outage that we had, very shortly afterwards, was an outage with Azure.
Microsoft's Explanation
This one happened due to, and this is a direct quote from Microsoft's update response:
"An inadvertent tenant configuration change within the Azure Front Door (AFD) triggered a widespread service disruption affecting both Microsoft services and customer applications dependent on AFD for global content delivery."
Breaking It Down in Simpler Terms
There was a faulty configuration of the Azure service that was implemented that disrupted the routing logic. So again, if we look at our language translation concept: In this one, it knew the translation, but it didn't know how to apply it.
That would be like if you were somebody, that took a few Spanish classes throughout your schooling, and then you tell somebody you understand Spanish, but you really don't. So, whenever they go to speak it to you, you don't really understand. You aren't really sure what they're asking of you.
That's the same idea as what happened here. They didn't know; they thought that it knew what was happening, but it didn't know how to route it.
The Impact
And so, this one, too, lasted for multiple hours. This resulted in multiple systems being down, and multiple funds being lost.
The Bigger Picture
All right, so as you can see, very similar but different things caused these to go down.
And at the root of it, no matter what the outage is, these outages have happened multiple times before, and this isn't the first time this has happened. It certainly won't be the last time.
The fact that these systems control a vast, vast swath of the Internet means that your business probably has something on there.
Was Your Business Affected?
If your business was affected by either one of these outages, drop a comment on the paired YouTube video. Let us know what systems were affected and how you handled it.
Talk to Continuity Expert, Contact Us Today: https://www.certumsolutions.com/contact
Steps You Can Take to Reduce Risk
Now let's talk about some steps that you can take to reduce the risk of having these systems take you down.
Because downtime equals lost revenue. We don't want that to happen, right?
Don't Rely on One System or One Hosting Provider for Everything
Probably one of the easiest things to do is to not rely on one system or one hosting provider for everything. You might not even know who is doing the cloud hosting for your system. But let's say you're running everything— one of our partners, Cin7, runs on Azure, right?
It could be a good idea to:
Have a backup of your inventory figures
Keep backup order reports
Store critical data somewhere accessible offline
Maybe in spreadsheets, maybe in daily reports that are generated. That could be a great place to do that.
2. Back Up Your Systems (And Back Them Up Again)
That brings us to our next one: If you can back up your systems; back up, back up, back up. We cannot stress that enough.
Critical Backup Rule
Make sure that your backups are not hosted on the same server or the same cloud computing provider where your system is stored and operating from. If your primary system runs on AWS, don't back it up to AWS. If it's on Azure, don't back up to Azure. Use a different provider for your backups.
3. Ask Questions About Your Infrastructure
If you aren't sure what system is hosting your software, ask.
Reach out to your software vendor
Google it
Reach out to us at Certum Solutions
We can help you figure out who is hosting it and get you some more information on plans and things you can do to help mitigate these risks.
4. Store Critical Data Offline
A couple of last suggestions I have: Have places where your data is stored offline. These days we're in a world where everything is heavily networked. At Certum, we work remotely, so most of our stuff is online. But still, if there's something critically important to your business that you need, store it offline.
What to Store Offline
Again, this goes back to storing:
Sales data
Inventory data
Customer information
Critical reports
This can just be in a spreadsheet stored on a local drive for maybe a warehouse manager. That way, at minimum, they at least can have and see figures from the last known point.
Why This Matters
This is always a good idea to have because if the system goes down, maybe they have to roll it back to a point in time before you were able to save your most recent data. A point in time where you have to go and redo data and re-input numbers.
So, you want to have it backed up to a last known state. Having that offline can be helpful.
Something where, depending on your need, you can back up every day, every week; but you want to definitely have something there.
5. Have a Plan in Place
And then probably the most important one is: Have a plan in place for how you can stay operational during these long-term outages.
The Golden Rule
As they say: Always expect the worst but prepare for the best.
You never want to sit there with your hands behind your back going, "I have no idea how I'm going to handle this." Because that means your business is going to be down, possibly for a lot longer.
What Your Plan Should Include
You want to have a plan in place for how your company can stay operational without reliance on these systems if need be.
At the end of the day, these systems are great. We're not saying you should stop using them. Just suggesting having a plan in place for:
How to keep themselves running during an outage
How to start back up once systems come back online
Need Help Preparing Your Business?
If this video was helpful for you, and if you have any more questions about this outage or about how to protect your business from future outages, please feel free to reach out to us here at Certum Solutions.
How We Can Help
Our team can assist you with:
Infrastructure assessment - Identify your cloud dependencies
Backup strategy planning - Multi-provider redundancy solutions
Disaster recovery planning - Keep your business running during outages
ERP system optimization - Ensure your critical business systems have failover options
Offline data strategies - Smart approaches to local data storage
Schedule Your Free Consultation Today! We'll help you build a resilient infrastructure that keeps your business running, even when the Internet's backbone has issues.
Your Action Plan Checklist
Use this checklist to start protecting your business today:
Identify your cloud providers - Do you know who hosts your critical systems?
Diversify your hosting - Are all your eggs in one basket?
Set up backup systems - Do you have backups on a different provider?
Create offline data copies - When was your last local backup?
Document your dependencies - What happens if each system goes down?
Write your outage plan - How will you operate during downtime?
Test your plan - Have you actually tried running without your main systems?
Train your team - Does everyone know the backup procedures?
Drop us a like on this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're posting more content about ERP systems, business needs, cloud infrastructure, and how to keep your business resilient in an increasingly connected world.
About Certum Solutions Watch the Full Video
Certum Solutions specializes in helping businesses build. We provide consulting on ERP systems, cloud architecture, disaster recovery planning, and business continuity strategies to ensure your operations can weather any storm.
Get in touch today: Schedule Free Infrastructure Consultation | Contact Our Team | Watch the Full Video
Related Resources:
Preparing Your Business for Natural or Man-Made Disasters https://www.certumsolutions.com/library/preparing-your-business-for-natural-or-man-made-disasters
What Makes a SaaS Product SaaS? https://www.certumsolutions.com/library/o3huto06i3fpob3cpgq9flejsqq2om
Was your business affected by the AWS or Azure outages? Share your experience in the comments section of the video, let's learn from each other's challenges. https://youtu.be/UHS8pbdMcVo
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What caused the AWS outage in October 2025?
The October 2025 AWS outage was caused by a latent defect in Amazon’s automated DNS management system. This issue prevented customers from accessing DynamoDB databases, which disrupted application connections across thousands of businesses. AWS reduced services temporarily to prevent further failures.
2. Why did the Microsoft Azure outage happen?
Microsoft Azure’s outage was triggered by an unintended configuration change within Azure Front Door, which disrupted global routing logic. This prevented many Microsoft services and customer applications from delivering content properly, causing multi-hour downtime.
3. How do AWS and Azure outages affect small and mid-sized businesses?
Even short outages can halt operations for SMBs that rely on cloud-hosted ERP, accounting, POS, or eCommerce systems. Common impacts include delayed orders, inventory issues, payroll interruptions, and lost revenue when mission-critical apps become temporarily unreachable.
4. What can I do to protect my business from cloud provider outages?
Businesses should implement a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategy, keep offline copies of critical data, schedule regular backups with a secondary provider, and document an outage response plan. These steps help ensure operations can continue even when major cloud platforms fail.
5. Should I back up my data if my software is already hosted in the cloud?
Yes. Cloud hosting does not replace backups. You should maintain backups on a different platform than your main system—meaning AWS systems should not back up to AWS, and Azure systems should not back up to Azure. This protects your data if your provider experiences a service failure.
6. What business systems are most likely affected by AWS or Azure downtime?
Inventory platforms, ERP systems, eCommerce websites, payment processors, banking tools, scheduling apps, and major enterprise applications frequently run on AWS or Azure. If your business uses modern software, there’s a strong chance part of it depends on one of these services.
7. How can Certum Solutions help prevent downtime from cloud outages?
Certum Solutions provides infrastructure assessments, multi-cloud backup planning, disaster recovery strategy, ERP failover configuration, and offline data workflows. Our team helps ensure your business stays operational, even when AWS or Azure experience major disruptions.
8. Do AWS and Azure outages happen often?
Large outages aren’t weekly occurrences, but they happen more regularly than most businesses realize. Both Amazon and Microsoft have experienced recurring multi-hour disruptions over the past decade. Because cloud platforms power so much of the internet, even one outage can have widespread impact.
9. How do I know which cloud provider my software uses?
You can check your vendor’s documentation or reach out to their support team. If you’re unsure, Certum Solutions can help you identify your cloud dependencies quickly and build a continuity plan around them.