Jakarta, INTI - The Indonesia Data Center Provider Organization (IDPRO) assessed that the power outage at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) did not significantly impact digital services in Indonesia. The facility was struck by unidentified "objects" on Sunday, March 1, 2026.
IDPRO Chairman, Hendra Suryakusuma, explained that the impact of the incident is relatively limited because AWS already has regional data centers and availability zones in Indonesia, including the Asia Pacific Region (Jakarta). With this architecture, most Indonesian customer workloads generally run in the nearest region or within the country, if available.
"However, if an Indonesian customer's workload is, by design, placed or fails over to the UAE region [for example, ME-CENTRAL-1] or the Gulf region, disruptions, increased latency, and limited failover capacity may occur during the incident," Hendra said on Monday, March 2, 2026.
Importance of Multi-AZ Implementation
According to Hendra, this incident emphasizes the importance of implementing a multi-availability zone (multi-AZ) and multi-region architecture, as well as regular failover testing. With proper design, critical services can continue operating without relying on a specific region, so disruptions in one region do not necessarily have a widespread impact on the national digital ecosystem.
Hendra also said that the incident reflects the importance of domestic data center capacity as part of efforts to maintain national digital sovereignty. However, Hendra emphasized that data placement policies are not solely about physical location, but also involve service resilience design and regulatory compliance.
"Furthermore, we already have the Personal Data Protection Law (UU PDP), although there is no specific institution to oversee and enforce it," he said.
He added that in global practice, private companies generally implement a hybrid, multi-cloud, or multi-region approach tailored to the level of service criticality, rather than placing the entire workload in a single location.
"Therefore, placement in Indonesia should be understood as a foundation [baseload & critical services], while for global needs, other regions can still be utilized with measurable risk controls," he said.
Conclusion
IDPRO assessed that the power outage that happened at one of AWS data center facilities in the UAE did not impact digital services in Indonesia significantly. This is due to regional data centers and availability zones in Indonesia. The incident reinforced the strategic importance of strengthening domestic data center capacity as a foundation for critical services, while maintaining diversified regional options with measured risk controls to safeguard service continuity and national digital sovereignty.
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