A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted access to several major digital platforms, including financial apps, AI tools, and popular entertainment services. The incident, which lasted for nearly 15 hours, showcased the scale of global reliance on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, a system that powers everything from banking apps to streaming platforms.
How did the issue begin?
According to Amazon’s service health dashboard, the problem was traced to a fault in a regional gateway on the US East Coast. Engineers said they were working on “multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery” as they investigated the root cause.
Reports of problems began appearing shortly after 7:30 AM London time, with outage tracker Downdetector recording thousands of user complaints across several regions. AWS said the fault affected multiple systems simultaneously, resulting in slower responses and intermittent service interruptions for many customers.
Which services were affected?
The outage affected a broad range of organisations and online platforms. Financial companies including Coinbase, Robinhood, and Venmo experienced temporary connectivity issues. AI firm Perplexity reported reduced website stability during the disruption.
Popular consumer and enterprise services, such as Apple Music and TV, Snapchat, Zoom, Salesforce, and Snowflake, also saw interruptions. Food chains such as McDonald’s were affected, while gaming titles like Fortnite, Roblox, and Epic Games registered spikes in user complaints.
Even Amazon’s own products, including Alexa and the Ring home security system, were impacted, illustrating just how widely AWS underpins both internal and external digital operations.
How long did it take to restore services?
The disruption lasted for around 15 hours, with full recovery confirmed by 6 PM New York time. In a statement, Amazon said that all systems had “returned to normal operations” and that engineers had implemented fixes to prevent further impact.
Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist at consultancy Duckbill, described the incident as “the most significant AWS outage since December 2021,” adding that the growing interconnection of digital systems makes even brief disruptions more noticeable.
What does the event tell us about cloud infrastructure?
The incident offers insight into how reliant businesses and consumers have become on a small number of global cloud providers. AWS holds about one-third of the worldwide cloud market, followed by Microsoft Azure (20 per cent) and Google Cloud Platform (13 per cent).
An opportunity for reflection
Although Monday’s outage was temporary, it has renewed attention on the importance of resilience and flexibility in the cloud era. As organisations continue to shift critical operations online, ensuring that systems can withstand unexpected disruptions has become essential.
For most users, the AWS interruption was a brief inconvenience. For businesses, it served as a useful reminder that digital reliability is no longer a given and that diversity in infrastructure remains one of the best safeguards for the connected world.
