AWS Cloud Outage Hit Global Platforms

AWS Cloud Outage Hit Global Platforms
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Amazon Web Services restored operations after a widespread outage on Monday that disrupted some of the world’s most popular websites and applications. Later that day, AWS said it saw significant signs of recovery, noting that most requests should be succeeding while the company worked through a backlog.

The global disruption, which began early Monday and lasted nearly three hours, affected more than 70 AWS services and led to widespread outages across financial, gaming, and communications platforms. Ookla said its outage tracking site Downdetector logged more than 4 million user reports globally. Platforms including Uber, Perplexity AI, Roblox, PayPal, and Signal were affected, while UK users experienced disruptions to service from Lloyds Bank, BT, Vodafone, Ring, and more. Amazon’s own services, including its retail site, Prime Video platform, and Alexa voice assistant, were also impacted.

E-Marketer senior analysts agreed that the event underscores the risks of concentrated cloud infrastructure and the need for greater resilience across digital ecosystems. Gadjo Sevilla said the outage made evident how deeply modern commerce, communication, and entertainment depend on a single cloud backbone, warning that over-reliance on one provider endangers brand reputation and customer trust. Jacob Bourne warned that as cloud reliance and workloads expand, these outages could hit industries harder.

Meanwhile, Grace Harmon forecasted that moving forward, businesses might invest in contingency systems that let users quickly shift between providers like AWS and Microsoft. Although there is no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage, Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at Sophos, said that with incidents like this, concern about a cyber event is natural. The disruption marks one of the most significant global internet incidents since last year’s Microsoft outage, which saw a defective CrowdStrike update cripple hospital, banking, and airport systems worldwide.