Author: Dr Aybars Tuncdogan, reader (associate professor) in digital innovation and information security, King's College London

The AWS outage doesn’t appear to be a cyber attack but a glitch – similar to last year’s CrowdStrike outage. The impact is similar and exposes a critical single point of failure. If a comparable vulnerability were deliberately targeted by malicious actors, the damage would be far worse.

The deeper issue is tech monoculture. We are building global infrastructure with very little diversity in platforms or providers. That’s why we are seeing systemic failures. It’s like agricultural monoculture – when everything relies on a single strain, one disease can wipe out entire plantations, because they all have the same genetics.

We need to diversify our technology infrastructure. Customers can design redundancy (i.e., systems that come online when something goes wrong) using on-premise failover or alternative providers. However, this can also be achieved by the providers themselves, such as by developing different competing infrastructures within their ecosystems.

This incident will likely be resolved quickly. However, unless we rethink the architecture (that is, we decentralise and diversify), we should expect more outages of this scale, whether from glitches or targeted attacks.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Hartree Centre has launched a powerful new supercomputer designed to help UK industry accelerate innovation through artificial intelligence and advanced computing.

Located within the STFC’s new £30 million Supercomputing Centre at its Daresbury Laboratory, the system is named in honour of Mary Coombs, the UK’s first female commercial programmer.

From new medicines to climate prediction, it will help UK businesses analyse vast datasets more quickly and turn cutting-edge research into real-world solutions faster, more efficiently and at greater scale, boosting productivity and growth across the UK economy.

Author: Jamil Ahmed, distinguished engineer, Solace

Even as cloud technology evolves, failures within the system will inevitably happen. ‘One-of-a-kind’ extremely rare outages or issues continue to plague every service provider from time to time, which is why the need to store valuable information on multiple provider services, known as an event mesh, have arisen.

From a business perspective, there are no excuses to having a single cloud provider. It’s multi-cloud all the way, treating cloud as commoditised compute, not building apps and services that are tied to knowing what cloud they’re in.

Unfortunately, when businesses first introduced the cloud into their strategy, about 10 years ago, they made multi-provider usage a problem to solve later on. It is now ‘later on,’ and the strategy of using one cloud service is demonstrably dangerous and negligent.

Anyone adopting cloud without thought for multi-cloud on day 1, should opt into an event mesh system or be fearful for that next ‘extremely rare’ event.

Author: Dai Vaughan, CTO, Public Digital

Disruption from large-scale digital outages is no longer a question of if, but when.

Accidental technology failure can pose as big a risk as a cyber-attack. Organisations need to move beyond a defensive mindset focused on prevention, towards an approach that embraces preparedness and resilience as an ongoing commitment.

Having well-rehearsed response plans that align leadership, IT, and operations is key to minimising damage and restoring services swiftly.

Crucially, resilience must be treated as a whole-organisation challenge, not just an IT problem… ultimately, it isn’t about eliminating risk entirely, but about understanding it, planning for it, and cultivating a culture that can absorb shocks and recover quickly.

 

Author: Amandine Le Pape, COO & co-founder of Element

The AWS incident is yet another reminder of the weakness of centralised systems.

When a key component of internet infrastructure depends on a single US cloud provider, a single fault can bring global services to their knees.

Centralised systems may offer convenience and scale, but they also create single points of failure. True resilience comes from decentralisation and self-hosting.

Governments and other organisations must rethink their infrastructure strategies now, or risk being next in line when the cloud goes dark, especially when it comes to their communications.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The worldwide AWS outage highlights the growing dependence on a small number of cloud hyperscaler providers.

That’s the view of Tim Wright, tech partner at Fladgate, following the disruption caused today by an outage at a location of Amazon Web Services on the East Coast of the US.

US-EAST-1, the tech giant’s original and largest location for its web services and data centres, is said to be now coming back online following sporadic service outages for many popular global platforms including social media, banks and HMRC.

AWS suffered from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services following a Domain Name System (DNS) issue at US-EAST-1.

Users of UK banks Lloyds and Halifax were unable to access services, while the UK Government’s HM Revenue and Customs website also went down.

Among the more than 50 platforms affected included Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite, Signal, Duolingo, Ring doorbells and WhatsApp – as well as BusinessCloud’s own website briefly.

Signum Solutions, a software-based business management solutions specialist, has been sold to Vision33 in a transaction advised on by KBS Corporate.

Founded in 2003 and based in Daresbury, Cheshire, Signum provides digital transformation services to growing companies. Its core offering is SAP Business One, an ERP system which incorporates financial management, sales & CRM, and purchasing among its features.

Vision33 is described as a global ERP solutions leader headquartered in California. The deal will build on its existing UK presence.

Octopus Ventures, part of Octopus Group, has appointed Jamie Kennell as senior partner and head of portfolio strategy.

Kennell joins from Pembroke Investment Managers, which manages the £300m Pembroke Venture Capital Trust (VCT). He initially joined Pembroke as head of investment portfolio, where he developed and oversaw an evolution and transformation of the VCT’s portfolio strategy, reporting and execution, before he was promoted to chief investment officer in May 2023.

He has also held senior roles with NatWest Markets, KPMG and 3i PLC. Latterly, he worked with Corporate Finance International, a global group of middle-market investment banks and corporate finance advisers, and Beringea, the transatlantic venture capital investor.

Telehouse International Corporation of Europe has broken ground on the new Telehouse West Two data centre at its existing London Docklands campus.

Described as the most connected data centre campus in Europe, the £275m investment in the new data centre is set for completion in 2028.

Flynn Management & Contracting Ltd, an international construction and fit-out company, will work with Jones Engineering Group, specialists in mechanical, electrical, and fire protection, to deliver the project.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Investor BGF is exploring an external fundraise for the first time and says it could raise £500 million from institutional investors next year.

The UK and Ireland’s most active growth capital investor says it is looking at providing new institutional investors with the opportunity to invest in UK growth companies through its regional platform.

BGF’s existing shareholders are Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest. It has delivered a 21.4% internal rate of return since 2016 and aims to invest more than £3 billion over the next five years.

Lazard has been appointed to advise BGF as it explores its options.

Seraphim Space Investment Trust plc, the world’s first listed SpaceTech investment company, has announced its results for the financial year ended 30th June 2025.

The company’s Net Asset Value – the difference between its assets and its liabilities – climbed 23.2% from £228.1m to £281.1m.

Its portfolio valuation was £259.8m, up 28.9% from £201.5m in the prior year.

 

FinTech group Plus500 has reported a drop in quarterly revenue for the three-month period ended 30th September 2025, although EBITDA remained steady compared to the same period in 2024.

It reported sales of $182.7m, down from $187.3m in Q3 2024, while EBITDA was $82.7m (Q3 2024: $82.2m).

 

EDX Medical Group plc has secured funding totalling up to £4 million.

A share placing will raise £2m while a new convertible loan note agreement for up to £2m will be issued to Professor Sir Chris Evans, the company’s founder and chief scientific officer.

EDX Medical develops digital diagnostic products and services supporting personalised treatments for cancer, cardiovascular and infectious diseases.

Mercia Asset Management PLC has appointed Janine Nicholls as a non-executive director.

She will become chair of the investor’s audit & risk committee when Dr Jonathan Pell retires from the board later this year.

 Nicholls recently stepped down as COO of Snowball Impact Management, a multi-asset impact investor, following its sale to Tribe Impact Capital.  She previously held the same role at private equity firms GHO Capital and Hermes GPE.

The CFO of Feedback plc is to leave the company.

Anesh Patel will step down from the board of directors from 10th November to pursue another opportunity.

 Emma Oswick (Stuart) will succeed Patel and join the board of directors in due course.

Amprologix has raised £740,000 in pre-Series A funding round to accelerate the development of novel antibiotics.

Its lead candidate, epidermicin NI01, aims to tackle MRSA infections in hospitals.

The money will be used to complete pre-clinical development of epidermicin NI01 in readiness for Phase I human clinical trials in 2026.

 

Eight Capital Partners plc has announced a series of board changes.

The company, listed on the Aquis Stock Exchange, backs businesses in FinTech, banking and asset management as well as other technology sectors.

Federico Bazzoni has been appointed executive chairman. He recently served as the CEO, investment banking at Vantage Capital Markets Hong Kong.

Luca Giacomo Zanni joins as an executive director while Bruce Gonyea has been appointed as a non-executive director. Zanni has served as the CFO at a number of businesses with revenues of up to €650 million, including at GPack SpA from 2022 to 2024. Gonyea currently serves as a member of the investment committee at Storie Co LLC.

Martin Groak and Luciano Maranzana will step down as directors while Dominic White will move into a non-exec director role.

FinTech group Fiinu Plc has appointed two new directors while Mark Wallace has resigned as a non-executive director for personal and health reasons.

Paul Barnes joins as a NED with immediate effect. He was part of the senior management teams at Santander Corporate and Investment Banking and Santander UK.

COO Michael Hopton, who has also been operating as interim CFO, has been added to the board as an executive director.

Winvia Entertainment PLC will float on the junior AIM market of the London Stock Exchange early next month.

The company, which operates prize draw brands BOTB and Click Competitions in the UK as well as online gaming in Romania, says preparations for admission are at an advanced stage.

It expects to list during the first week of November 2025 and expects to raise £40m in the IPO.

Author: Chris Maguire

Tech entrepreneur Raina Heverin has opened up about the life-changing injuries she suffered in a freak fall six months ago.

The co-founder of Liverpool-based EdTech Supplywell is thought to have been sleepwalking when she fell from the balcony of a Paris Airbnb in April while on a family trip with her brother and sister-in-law.

A JustGiving campaign that was launched to support her recovery has so raised over £40,000.

Raina, whose husband Michael is the CEO of Supplywell, continues to undergo a range of intensive rehabilitation, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and psychological support.

Writing on LinkedIn she said: “To anyone facing a life-altering challenge: You are not broken. You are being rebuilt.”