Amazon Web Services Outage Disrupts Major Websites

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the dominant player in the cloud infrastructure arena, experienced a significant service disruption Monday, impacting access to a wide range of online platforms and applications.

The company attributed the outage to an unspecified “operational issue” impacting “multiple services.” In a statement released at 2:01 a.m. PDT, AWS stated they were “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery.” While the precise nature of the issue remains unclear, industry analysts speculate the outage could be linked to a cascading failure within a critical AWS region or a software bug affecting core infrastructure services.

Shortly after the initial notification, AWS reported “significant signs of recovery.” “Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information as it becomes available,” the company stated. However, the incident underscores the inherent risks associated with centralized cloud computing and the potential for single points of failure to create widespread disruptions.

The breadth of the outage highlighted the reliance many high-profile businesses have on AWS. Reports surfaced indicating issues with services including Amazon’s own e-commerce platform, Disney+, Lyft, the McDonald’s app, The New York Times website, Reddit, Ring security systems, Robinhood, Snapchat, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Venmo, and Verizon. The real-world impact extended beyond mere website access, potentially affecting logistical operations, financial transactions, and communication networks.

The impact extended into the gaming sphere, with social media buzzing about disruptions affecting cloud-based games such as Roblox and Fortnite. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase reported that numerous users were unable to access the service, pointing to the ripple effects of cloud infrastructure outages on the burgeoning digital asset market.

Canva, the graphic design platform, publicly acknowledged the issue, stating, “We are experiencing significantly increased error rates which are impacting functionality on Canva. There is a major issue with our underlying cloud provider.” For Canva and similar SaaS businesses, reliance on AWS and its stability is paramount for maintaining service level agreements (SLAs) and retaining customers.

This latest AWS outage will likely fuel further discussion on multi-cloud strategies and distributed infrastructure architectures as companies seek to mitigate the risk of relying predominantly on a single cloud provider. While multi-cloud deployments introduce complexity and management overhead, the potential for increased resilience and geographical redundancy may outweigh the costs for organizations operating mission-critical services.

This is a developing story. CNBC will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available.