Bhavish Agrawal, Ola Cabs cofounder and CEO posted on X commenting on the Microsoft Windows global outage on 19 July, “On the Microsoft outage, here’s the main thing I feel we can do. Outages are momentary with no deliberate intent to cause harm. It Can happen once in a while to any company. But it represents an outcome that could also happen due to deliberate action by bad actors and intentions..”
On Thursday, a CrowdStrike update in Windows 10 triggered a computer outage on Friday, globally affecting Airports, Offices, Hotels, and Banks, causing a Blue Screen of Death error which makes the system restart or shut down. The affected computers will need a manual reboot to get back online.
The Ola head remarked that it is a risk for India and its people as almost 80% of the country’s data is stored abroad. He further added, “The government needs to recognize the risk of the data staying abroad and focus on data localization norms to address these risks.”
Recent developments at Ola have hinted at Agrawal’s inclination for Made-in-India technologies such as the ride-hailing platform’s switch from Google Maps to in-house Ola Maps, along with a shift from Google Cloud to Ola’s cloud platform.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also posted on X stating that Microsoft and CrowdStrike are working to resolve the issue and get the systems functioning. It has been estimated that the outage was so impactful on account of the widespread reach of Microsoft globally in varying sectors.
