While some companies did face disruptions, others have denied any major hindrances in their operations.
New Delhi: From disruptions at store levels to impact on ERP, a host of retailers in India also suffered tech disruptions amid an unprecedented global outage that struck on Friday, causing extensive disruptions across various sectors, including airlines, financial institutions, stock markets, payment systems, and emergency services.
IndiaRetailing reached out to retail industry representatives, some of who admitted that technical disruptions did affect their operations.
“We have Celebrity Fashion ERP hosted at Yotta, it is impacted,” said a spokesperson from Celebrity Fashions Ltd.
Bengaluru-based tech-heavy retailer Ace Turtle said some of the points of sales (POS) terminals were hit on Friday morning, prompting the company to look for alternative solutions.
“There was a temporary impact on our retail store POS terminals for the period of outage. Since the stores had just opened in the morning and we had planned an alternative mechanism to deal with the outage, we could ensure that there was no impact on our customers,” Bhavin Kothari, chief information officer (CIO) & Head of Supply Chain & Logistics, Ace Turtle. Kothari, however, said there was no other impact of the outage and its offices were functioning normally.
IndiaRetialing has also reached out to a couple of technology and e-commerce professionals in the retail sector; their responses are still awaited and will be updated soon.
“We had a minimal impact on the retail side. Only retailers using Windows and CrowdStrike as their endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions were affected. Devices with this specific combination received immediate solutions to address the issue. Additionally, partners within the ecosystem have been supportive, leveraging different platforms such as Linux and other open-source solutions to mitigate the impact,” said Anil Menon, chief information officer (CIO), Lulu Group India.
While a major disruption did affect most of them, some retailers have reported no impact from the global tech glitch.
According to media and agency reports, the incident began with a failure of CrowdStrike Falcon, a cybersecurity tool that supports Microsoft Windows, leading to continued interruptions despite Microsoft’s efforts to address the problem.
In India, the impact was severe, with widespread delays in flight operations and disruptions in payment and trading systems. Major airlines such as IndiGo, Akasa Airlines, and SpiceJet experienced issues with booking and check-in processes.
The central government is currently engaged with Microsoft to resolve the situation, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to release an advisory regarding the outage.
In addition to this, the outage disrupted stock exchange operations worldwide, including the London Stock Exchange. Several brokerage firms, such as Nuvama, Edelweiss, and Motilal Oswal, also faced technical difficulties, impacting trading activities in India, reports added.
“Most of the servers were down and 50% of user laptops were impacted. Even clinic infra was impacted. We are still working to go back to normal,” said Lokesh Wagadre, VP & Head of Technology, Kaya Ltd.
Microsoft and CrowdStrike are addressing the issue, with Microsoft reporting progress in restoring service availability. They are working to reroute affected traffic and have noted improvements in their updates.
With inputs from Shiv Joshi
