‘Significant exposure’: Amazon Web Services outage exposed UK state’s £1.7bn reliance on tech giant

The article highlights the UK government's significant reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon, which was exposed by a recent global outage. The outage disrupted thousands of businesses, including government services, and raised concerns about the risks associated with the government's deepening ties with the tech giant. The article notes that despite warnings from UK regulators, including the Treasury, about the risks of such reliance, the government has continued to deepen its relationship with AWS. This was evidenced by the £40 billion investment announcement made by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Prime Minister Keir Starmer in June. The article underscores the vulnerability of the UK's public services and the broader economy to disruptions in cloud computing, and it suggests that the government's reliance on a single provider, AWS, may need to be re-evaluated to mitigate such risks in the future.