AWS Says Cloud Service Has Recovered After Widespread Outage

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, said its service had recovered after a widespread disruption on Monday degraded services for a range of customers including government agencies, AI companies and financial platforms.

AWS has fixed an underlying problem with a regional gateway on the US East Coast that caused the disruption, the company said on its health dashboard just over three hours after its first update on the issue. Some users might see slower responses or increased error rates during the recovery, it said. User complaints began spiking just after 7:30 a.m. London time, according to data from Downdetector.

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud service underpins a large chunk of the internet, accounting for about a third of the cloud market. Any outage has major ripple effects.

Related: Viewpoint: When the Cloud Sneezes, the Digital Ecosystem Catches a Cold

Companies that had been impacted by the AWS issue largely said that their services had recovered as well. Financial platform Robinhood said that services had recovered while Coinbase said it was monitoring results of the fix. Artificial intelligence firm Perplexity and British tax authority HMRC also said that the outage, which disrupted their websites, was resolved.

User complaints for Amazon’s own services, including Alexa and the Ring home security system, also declined, according to Downdetector’s stats.

Most glitches on major tech systems are fixed quickly. Still, interconnected technology systems have meant that problems at one company can cause catastrophic impacts across the global economy. Last year, a faulty software update at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. grounded flights and crashed systems around the world, causing billions of dollars in damages.

Photo: The logo of Amazon Web Services (AWS) is displayed on a sign at a pop-up office ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg