What still works when the network is cut?
Everything. Datasight runs on your own machines and needs no outside connection. When the link to the outside drops, every function carries on, from the first check on incoming data to the answers of Anna AI. A tool that does its work on someone else’s servers stops when the link stops. Before you buy, ask what stops when the cable is pulled.
Ask a supplier what happens when the network goes down. You will learn more about the product than from its brochure. Many tools sold today as artificial intelligence, or as data platforms, do their real work somewhere else. The screen is on your desk; the work happens far away. While the link holds, nobody notices. The day it drops, the screen stays and the answers stop.
Every service fails sometimes
This is not a complaint about any one company. It happens to the largest ones.
On 19 and 20 October 2025, a fault at Amazon Web Services, one of the world’s largest cloud providers, disrupted its Northern Virginia region from 11:48 PM on the 19th to 2:20 PM on the 20th, Pacific time. The fault sat in the system that tells other computers where to find DynamoDB, one of its database services. Amazon’s own account says that “all systems needing to connect” to the service “immediately began experiencing DNS failures”, and that the event “impacted many customers in significant ways”.
Ten months earlier, on 11 December 2024, a change to a monitoring service inside OpenAI left, in the company’s words, “all OpenAI services” in “significant degradation or complete unavailability” for more than four hours.
Both companies published detailed, candid accounts, which is to their credit. The lesson is not that they are careless. It is that even services of that size stop, and that whatever depends on them stops with them, wherever the customer is.
Some networks are cut on purpose
For many organisations, outages are not even the main concern. Some networks are kept apart from the internet by design: those that carry classified information, those that run industrial plants, those of sites too remote for a reliable link. And in a crisis, the link can be one of the first things to fail, just when people most need to know what is going on. A platform that only works when connected is missing exactly where it is needed.
An air gap is a test, not a promise
A network with no connection at all to the outside is called air-gapped: there is only air between it and the internet.
Running on your own servers does not make a product offline. Some software installed on site still calls out: to check its licence, to fetch an update, to reach an AI model or to load a map. Each of those calls is a thread to the outside. When the cable is cut, whatever hangs on a thread stops. The honest test is the simplest one: unplug it and watch.
Pull the cable
InteractiveSoftware installed on your servers
- Sign-inChecked on your serversWorking
- Search across recordsThe index is on your serversWorking
- Opening a documentStored on your serversWorking
- Questions to the AI modelThe model runs on the supplier’s servers, outsideWorking
- The mapDownloaded from outside as you move itWorking
- UpdatesDownloaded from the supplier, outsideWorking
Try itPull the cable and watch what still works.
The cable is in: everything works.
Green: still works. Red: stops. Amber: waits until the cable is back.
Illustrative. A generic product, not a named one.
What Datasight does without the link
Datasight is built to run with no outside connection at all. The platform sits on your machines. So does Anna AI, the model that answers your teams’ questions: it runs on your hardware and calls no outside service. Cut the link and your teams lose nothing they use. A remote site keeps every function, from the first check on incoming data to the answers of Anna AI. That is also why the platform can be installed on networks that never touch the internet, classified ones included.
We would rather you test this than take our word for it. Independence that has never been tested is only a hope.
How to check it
- Ask each supplier for a written list of every outside service its product calls: licences, updates, models, maps.
- On a test installation, cut every outside connection. Run a normal working day on it, questions to the model included.
- Keep the network records of that day, and look at every connection the product tried to open.
Sources
- Amazon Web Services, “Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region”, post-event summary of the disruption of 19 and 20 October 2025. AWS
- OpenAI, “API, ChatGPT & Sora Facing Issues”, incident write-up of 11 December 2024. OpenAI Status