Singapore is known for its world-class digital infrastructure. But the region was left vulnerable on October 14th, when a sudden digital service outage caused major disruption, leaving several businesses in a lurch. It also caused inconvenience to the general public, leaving many people confused and worried, when services such as online banking and social media were inaccessible for hours!
Impact on Banking and Financial Services
DBS, named World’s Best Digital Bank in 2016, was particularly affected due to the outage. However, the company was quick to address the issue, and assured the public that they were working on restoring the services as soon as possible.
In 2017, DBS had announced a partnership with leading data center provider Equinix in 2017. Equinix told the Straits Times that it was aware of the technical issue at one of its data centers and was investigating the matter. Equinix SG1 is the highest network density data center in the region, and provides access to one of the three GRX peering points in the world. It is a major hub for many of the services and its importance as such cannot be overstated.
Impact on Telecommunications and Social Media
Singtel users reported similar outages at the same time, but Singtel clarified via a Facebook post that there were no anomalies in their networks.
Meanwhile, aftershocks of the outage were felt as far away as India, South Africa, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates and Maldives, where many people were unable to access their Meta accounts like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, and took to X (formerly Twitter) to share their anguish.
Challenges and Solutions
Data center outages have become increasingly frequent, and organizations must ensure their data centers are designed, built, and operated properly in order to minimize the risk of outages. According to Uptime Institute’s Annual Outage Analysis 2023, more than two-thirds of all outages cost more than US$ 100,000, including nearly 25 percent that cost over US$ 1 Million.
“We always emphasize the importance of having a data center industry certification,” reiterated Patrick Chan, Vice President, Asia, Uptime Institute.
Certification program like Uptime Institute’s Tier Certification and EPI’s Compliance Certification can help organizations ensure their data centers are operating at peak performance and reduce the risk of outages.
“Outages like the October 14 incident show how critical data centers are for our daily lives and therefore organizations need to continuously review single point of failures and take appropriate measures to mitigate these risks,” said Edward van Leent, Chairman, EPI.
Another industry expert W.Media spoke with suggested that data center failures are becoming more common. While IT workloads are much higher than before, there is no room for operational complacency. Industry certification programmes are designed to ensure that standards are met at all times.
The recent outages in Singapore serve as an important reminder of the risks posed by having a single point of failure when it comes to digital services. Companies must ensure that their systems are properly configured and resilient against potential disruptions, and more importantly, that they have proper contingency plans in place. This will help them to minimize the potential impact of service outages and ensure that users can still access their services even in the face of technical difficulties.