Hamburg, October 27, 2026. Within just a few days, outages at two major cloud providers have highlighted the risks of digital dependencies. On October 13, various Microsoft 365 services were disrupted in Germany and the United Kingdom. A week later, an outage in Google’s cloud infrastructure in London caused problems with the digital services of several British banks.

For Tim Stephan Schulze, CEO of the Hamburg-based IT company OIT.One, such incidents highlight a fundamental problem: Companies can outsource their IT, but not the responsibility for its availability.

„In this context, the risk is simply shifting,“ Schulze explained on the podcast „Nöding & Voges: Watt ’ne Law“ regarding the use of external cloud services.

What happens if email and the cloud are unavailable?

Anyone who fully relies on individual service providers for business-critical applications must also factor in the possibility of their failure. Schulze therefore recommends not focusing solely on cost, features, and security promises when selecting a provider. Equally important, he says, are control over data and access rights, as well as the ability to switch to alternative systems in the event of disruptions.

Practical preparation is particularly crucial. In the podcast, Schulze argued for actually running through emergency scenarios rather than simply documenting contingency plans. How does a company communicate if email systems go down? Is critical data available independently of the cloud provider? Which business processes can continue to operate?

Digital oversight is a top priority

Cloud services offer significant advantages, but they also create new dependencies. According to Schulze, company executives must therefore understand the operational risks associated with their IT architecture and how to mitigate them.

The Federal Office for Information Security also recommends taking cloud outages into account in risk assessments and preparing appropriate contingency strategies.