Hong Kong tech experts urge firms to diversify cloud services after mass IT outage
- City officials say they were ‘highly concerned’ following massive outage that threw Hong Kong’s air services into chaos
Hong Kong tech experts have cautioned corporations against relying solely on one provider for cloud computing services to avoid a repeat of an IT outage on Friday that disrupted businesses around the world and threw the city’s air services into chaos.
The specialists weighed in on Saturday after Hong Kong authorities said they were “highly concerned” over the global computer glitch that disrupted Microsoft cloud computing services and affected Windows devices.
The outage was triggered by a software update from a third-party cybersecurity provider, CrowdStrike.
Francis Fong Po-kiu, the honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, said companies should avoid overreliance on single platforms.
“Corporations should now consider using different cloud platforms for redundancy and load balancing purposes to avoid relying on one single cloud platform to perform all the functions such as programming, big data and artificial intelligence,” he said.
The outage on Friday affected airlines and airports across the world, including those in Germany, Australia, New Zealand and India. Some government operations as well as banking and healthcare systems were also affected.
