DATA CENTRE OUTAGES
AI workloads push data centres to upgrade fire and cooling systems
Data centres are significantly upgrading fire safety, cooling, and electrical systems following a recent Google Cloud incident. The surge in AI computing power, with AI racks costing millions, necessitates enhanced protection for these critical digital assets. Operators are investing in advanced fire suppression, robust power, and efficient cooling to prevent costly disruptions.
Google Cloud outage in India after third-party data centre fire triggers shutdown
The cloud-computing unit said the fire led to an emergency power shutdown at the facility, isolating a local point of presence in Delhi and reducing network capacity across the metropolitan area.
Bullish Bets: Vinit Bolinjkar maps out India’s next big market winners
Indian equities are seeing stock-specific action. Market expert Vinit Bolinjkar is bullish on select banking, power, defence, and industrial companies. He highlights mid-sized banks like Yes Bank, RBL Bank, and Bandhan Bank. Cummins India is seen as a long-term compounder. Coal India offers yield and growth. Adani Green and Adani Enterprises are preferred in the power theme.
India’s scorching nights strain power grid and threaten health
India faces a dual threat from dangerously hot summers and increasingly sweltering nights, exacerbated by global warming and urban heat islands. This sustained heat strains both people and power infrastructure, leading to record energy demand and widespread blackouts, particularly impacting vulnerable populations.
Cyber Alert: Companies rush to fortify systems
Rubrik, Securonix and Proofpoint reported shorter sale cycles, demand for additional disaster recovery locations and stronger digital ring fences, as the threat of phishing emails and cyberattacks has gone up manifold.
Oil near $100, gold plateaus, AI fuels a global capex boom: Hitesh Jain on what investors need to know
Hitesh Jain of Yes Securities outlines a market of ambiguity for crude oil, caught between geopolitical tensions and potential easing. He contrasts the AI investment cycle with the dotcom era, highlighting stronger fundamentals and faster adoption. Jain views India as an AI adoption beneficiary, while silver offers a longer runway than gold due to industrial demand.
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Meta sees daily active users decline by 20 million across FB, Instagram and WhatsApp: Here's why
Meta Platforms experienced a slight decline of 20 million daily active users across its social media platforms in Q1 CY 2026, marking a break in its growth streak. While external factors were cited, the dip may signal user saturation or dissatisfaction as the company heavily invests in AI and infrastructure.
Cyberattacks surge across UAE amid Iran conflict, businesses face disruptions and rising risks
Cyberattacks are surging across UAE and Gulf. Financial services, government platforms, and utilities face a sustained wave of breaches. Cyberattack attempts have tripled, disrupting business activity and causing delays. Experts warn of growing vulnerabilities and erosion of confidence in digital infrastructure. Demand for cybersecurity professionals is rising sharply in the region.
Telecom infrastructure, gear makers face disruptions
Telecom operations in India are facing significant challenges. The ongoing conflict in West Asia is disrupting tower connectivity and increasing costs for imported equipment. Restrictions on diesel sales are hindering essential refuelling for telecom towers. Power outages are also a concern, increasing reliance on diesel generators. Supply chains for tower manufacturing are affected, potentially delaying network expansion.
Bajaj Finserv's AI push; Govt's UPI fix
Bajaj Finserv chairman Sanjiv Bajaj says the company will launch a dedicated fund for AI startups. This and more in today's ETtech Top 5.
Telcos navigate subsea cable risks; Centre asks for analysis, fallback options as war rages
Amidst escalating tensions in West Asia, the Indian government has directed telecom firms and subsea cable operators to assess risks to critical data pipelines. Contingency plans are being developed as Iran's threats to undersea cables could disrupt a significant portion of India's westward traffic, with alternative routes proving insufficient and costly.
Amazon Web Services hit again: Drone-linked disruption shakes Bahrain cloud network
Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the Middle East experienced fresh disruption in its Bahrain region due to ongoing drone activity. This follows earlier drone strikes this month that damaged AWS facilities in both the UAE and Bahrain, highlighting the vulnerability of critical cloud infrastructure in conflict zones. Restoration efforts are underway for the affected services.
Amazon down for thousands of users in US: Downdetector
Amazon experienced a website outage affecting thousands of users in the United States. Reports on Downdetector showed problems with logging in, browsing and checkout. Minor disruptions also appeared on Prime Video and Amazon Web Services, while the exact cause of the issue remained unclear.
Elon Musk’s X hit by another service outage
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), faced a second widespread outage this week, impacting users in the US, India, and other countries. Downdetector reported 400 US complaints and 30 in India. The cause remains unclear. A severe outage on Saturday affected thousands, with ongoing data centre issues cited by engineers.
Twitter down: X outage continues to disrupt logins and key features
Twitter down: Elon Musk’s social media platform X's (formerly Twitter) outage continues following a major data centre outage. User complaints surged past 2,000, affecting logins and access to the app and website. The engineering team warned of ongoing issues and delays earlier in the day, while concerns rise over data security and recovery of private messages.
X faces extended outage due to data centre glitch; users report issues with logins and DMs
X has not disclosed the exact cause or extent of the data centre incident, but concerns are mounting over the security and recovery of private messages. A wave of memes and posts has since flooded the platform, with many users calling for clarity on the status of their direct messages.
X (Twitter) outage blamed on data centre failure, thousands affected worldwide
X Twitter Outage (Google Trends): A data centre outage at Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, disrupted access for thousands of users worldwide on 23 May. The issue peaked around midnight IST, with over 6,000 reports globally. The company acknowledged the technical problem through its engineering account but offered no timeline for a fix. While India saw limited impact, users across the US, Canada, Peru and Germany reported persistent trouble. The glitch marks the third major outage since September 2024, raising user concerns over platform stability.
PhonePe UPI payments disrupted as new data centre fails to handle rush
The glitch also impacted other unified payments interface (UPI) apps like Paytm and Google Pay. Thousands of users reported issues with UPI on Downdetector. This is the third such disruption in less than a month.
NICSI's Shastri Park data centre power outage disrupts several govt websites
A power outage at the Shastri Park data centre of National Informatics Centre Services Inc (NICSI) caused several key government websites, including those for the Department of Economic Affairs and the commerce ministry, to go down. The issue is being addressed and the sites are expected to be operational shortly.
Microsoft outage: Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal bats for stringent data localisation norms
Aggarwal has been pushing for greater adoption of Made-in-India technologies and lately moved from Google Maps to the in-house developed Ola Maps. He invited developers to join at a subsidised cost and claimed unlike Google his company charges in rupees and not in dollars.
Government asks Meta to explain WhatsApp outage
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) wants to know if WhatsApp's outage was due to an internal glitch or a cyberattack.
Facebook outage was caused by maintenance error, company says
The Facebook outage was the largest that Downdetector said it had ever seen. It blocked access to apps for billions of users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, further intensifying weeks of scrutiny for the nearly $1-trillion company.
Karnataka may cut power tariff for industries to make them more competitive
Industrial units, especially those in the exports business, have quite often complained to the government that power outages are delaying their production. They cannot, at the same time, go for captive generation as power costs become steep, driving up their overall production costs.
HDFC Bank embarks on Technology Transformation Agenda: MD Sashi Jagdishan to employees
Giving details of the Technology Transformation Agenda, Jagdishan said that the bank has invested heavily in the infrastructure to handle any potential load that it might encounter in the next 3 to 5 years. "We are also in the process of accelerating our cloud strategy to be on the cutting edge leveraging best in class cloud service providers," he added.
Digital outage hits HDFC Bank customers again
In December 2020, the RBI had barred HDFC Bank from new digital launches and issuance of fresh credit cards until it addressed its digital issues. The RBI had also asked the bank’s board to identify lapses and fix accountability.
RBI pulls up HDFC over outages, tells bank to halt all digital launches, new credit cards
The regulator has sought an explanation from HDFC Bank about an interruption in digital services on November 21. This is the third disruption of digital services that HDFC Bank customers have faced in the past two years.
HDFC Bank's problems may be linked to growing too fast
HDFC Bank is the largest credit card issuer with 1.49 crore cards is use according to RBI data. It is also one of the largest banks with regards to UPI transactions with 179.5 million transactions processed through its system in October.
HDFC Bank outage: RBI seeks details
The regulator has sought details behind the data centre outage that meant services on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), ATMs and card channels were unavailable for several hours.
Contrary to government's claims, small towns, rural areas still suffer from power outages
During March 2016, 61 per cent of locations experienced outages for more than 15 hours, 41 per cent for more than 30 interruptions each more than 15 min.
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