Amazon cloud service AWS out again, know who got affected by it

Amazon Web Services has suffered a third outage of this month on Tuesday. Several online platforms that use cloud networks AWS to provide computing capacity to cloud networks operated by AWS.

AWS services restored after a power outage (REUTERS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Cloud arm of Amazon, has suffered a third outage of this month on Tuesday interrupting major online services. This time it happened due to a power outage that halted services like Slack, Epic Games store and Asana. However, the issue has been resolved and the service is operating normally. Amazon Web Services (AWS) shared the same.

The cloud service provider has earlier stated that an "impairment of several network devices" in its AWS Virginia data centre region caused the prolonged outage on Tuesday. The platforms providing computing capacity to cloud networks operated by AWS were affected by this outage.

Office messaging app Slack reported experiencing issues in file uploading, message editing, and other services, whereas, workplace collaboration app Asana was not accessible for users.

AWS outage affects on global scale

Epic Games Store faced issues in logins and accessing the library, purchases, etc. Moreover, news aggregator Flipboard, online learning site Udemy, dating app Grindr, streaming service Hulu, and IoT services from Honeywell, Life360, and Samsung's SmartThings were also affected according to Downdetector.com

A major outage, earlier, this month temporarily interrupted the services of major companies like streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, trading app Robinhood as well as Amazon's own e-commerce site.

Hence, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is conducting an antitrust probe into AWS, as reported by Bloomberg. FTC officials have contacted companies in the past few months to collect information about competition issues related to AWS. The probe was undertaken as part of an investigation that was kicked off into four tech giants begun during the Trump's administration.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-22/amazon-cloud-unit-draws-fresh-antitrust-scrutiny-from-khan-s-ftc

Lina Khan, the head of the agency, who is leading this probe has set her focus on Amazon's $16 billion cloud business, which brings in most of the e-commerce giant's profit. The FTC could probe into whether Amazon has an incentive to discriminate against software companies that sell their products to clients of AWS, while at the same time competing with Amazon. However, the FTC as well as Amazon has not commented on this yet.

According to research firm IDC, Amazon is the world's biggest cloud computing firm with 24.1 per cent of the overall market.