You wouldn’t think a disaster as old fashioned as a fire could disrupt the internet, but it can, and it did in France on Wednesday.
A big blaze at a French cloud services firm put the kibosh on millions of websites.
The damage was widespread, as it took out government agencies’ portals, news websites, shops and banks.
It also destroyed one of four data centers in a city in eastern France, and damaged another server.
Two days earlier, the French cloud computing firm that went up in flames had announced their plans for an IPO.
The chairman of the data center that was torched posted this message on Twitter. ”Firefighters were immediately on the scene but could not control the fire.”
There were over 100 firemen on the scene to fight the fire, and a huge cloud of black smoke filled the sky in France.
This is a company that essentially competes against Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud of Alphabet Inc., and Microsoft’s Azure. They are a major world player.
The company was founded in 1999.
The company will spend the next few weeks trying to rebuild the equipment and checking their fiber optic connections.
No word yet on any potential major data losses, but an enormous amount of businesses are dealing with some series issues because of the fire.
For instance, it’s the middle of Paris Fashion Week, and fashion industry businesses and PR firms were affected.
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