Technological innovation and cloud dependency: what happens when servers fail

On October 19, Brazil celebrates Innovation Day. The date was established in 2010 in honor of Alberto Santos Dumont, who on October 19, 1901 completed the journey between the Parc de Saint-Cloud and the Eiffel Tower in Paris aboard his N-6 airship. The record goes down in history as one of the most symbolic milestones of human ingenuity applied to overcoming limits.

More than a century later, limits are still being tested, this time at a speed and scale that Santos Dumont could hardly have imagined. And it was precisely during the week of Innovation Day 2025 that a specific event brought a timely reflection on ends and means: in the early hours of October 20, Amazon reported that one of its servers based in Virginia, USA, was experiencing technical problems. The incident affected the operations of multiple companies that depend on Amazon Web Services, AWS, to keep their businesses running.

How far do companies depend on the cloud?

Cloud computing has come a long way since the first initiatives in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the last 15 years, cloud platforms have consolidated a new paradigm: storage, processing and infrastructure have migrated from local servers to globally distributed environments, with elasticity and scalability on demand. For most organizations, operating without the cloud is no longer a practical option.

This creates a dependency that, most of the time, goes unnoticed precisely because it works. Robust security architectures and operational redundancy make failures like the one at AWS relatively rare. But when they do happen, the ripple effect is proportional to the degree of concentration of the services affected.

It's worth thinking about directly: what would happen to a bank's critical operations without its computer systems? How would marketplaces, payment platforms or integrated hospital networks function without the technological integrations that support them? The answer, in both cases, is that the interruption would be immediate and the impact measurable in minutes.

The cloud as a current stage, not a final destination

An important point in this debate is not to confuse the current state with the possible horizon. Cloud computing represents the most consolidated in terms of data storage and processing today, but it is not the end point of technological evolution.

Trends such as edge computing, quantum computing, distributed artificial intelligence and blockchain applications point towards increasingly decentralized architectures, where dependence on a single provider or a single geographical region tends to decrease. In this sense, the AWS event acts as an accelerator of awareness about the need for diversification and architectural resilience.

The responsibility of those who build technology

"As specialists in developing business-oriented technology, innovation is our raw material. It's from there that we think, create, test and apply solutions that, at the end of the day, will work to improve people's lives," says Fulvio Mascara, Chief Scientist and Chief Operating Officer at Foursys.

Mascara's reflection points to something that often takes a back seat in discussions about innovation: the responsibility that accompanies creation. Just as important as developing technically advanced solutions is ensuring that they operate smoothly, resiliently and in line with the real needs of each client. Innovation that fails at the critical moment does not fulfill its function.

Acting as a protagonist in a context of high operational criticality requires an attitude that goes beyond technical excellence. It requires a systemic vision, contingency planning and an innovation agenda that is discussed at all levels of the organization, not just in the technology areas.

What the AWS incident teaches us about technological strategy

Events like this shouldn't just be treated as one-off operational failures. They are opportunities for strategic review for any company that depends on digital infrastructure to operate.

There are a few questions worth asking:

• Does the current architecture include redundancy between providers or regions?
• Is there a tested operational continuity plan for cloud downtime scenarios?
• Do the business areas understand which critical operations depend on which external services?
• Does the innovation strategy consider not only advancement, but the resilience of what is already in production?

Answering these questions honestly is the first step towards transforming a passive dependency into a strategic and conscious relationship with technology.

This post is based on an opinion piece published in TI Inside by Fulvio Mascara, Chief Scientist and Chief Operating Officer of Foursys, on the occasion of Innovation Day 2025.