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A widespread outage affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) has disrupted the operations of more than 1,000 firms worldwide, potentially costing corporations billions of dollars in lost income and service interruptions, according to Parcelhero, a home delivery expert, as reported by ACW. Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring firm Catchpoint, told CNN that the total financial impact of the AWS disruption could reach billions. Speaking to CNN, he said: "The incident highlights the complexity and fragility of the internet, as well as how much every aspect of our work depends on the internet to work. The financial impact of this outage will easily reach into the hundreds of billions due to loss in productivity for millions of workers that cannot do their job, plus business operations that are stopped or delayed — from airlines to factories." The outage has already caused delayed flights, prevented consumers from making purchases on certain apps, restricted access to financial services, and affected workers trying to carry out their jobs. AWS' Reach and Importance The incident has underlined the widespread influence of AWS on global digital infrastructure. Key statistics from 2024 show: AWS accounted for 37% of the global cloud market share (Gartner) Generated $107.6 billion in revenue Operates over 6 million kilometres of fibre optic cabling Available in 38 geographic regions Notable clients include Disney, the US Army, Capital One, United Airlines, and the NFL Companies Affected The outage has impacted services from more than 1,000 companies. Downdetector, which monitors outages, received over eight million reports from users citing problems accessing websites, applications, games, and online banking. Affected companies include Amazon, Bank of Scotland, Duolingo, Eventbrite, Flickr, Fortnite, Halifax, HMRC, Lloyds Bank, Perplexity AI, Playstation Network, Pokemon Go, Slack, Square, WhatsApp, Wordle, Xero, and Zoom. Impact on Airlines and Supply Chains The outage also affected airline systems, though disruptions appear to be limited. Jinks noted that issues could still have knock-on effects on the global supply chain, as much of the world's air freight is transported in passenger planes. Also Read: AWS Outage - Why is Canvas Down and When Will It Be Restored? He explained: "Today's outage is thought to have occurred initially at Amazon's US-EAST-1 region in Virginia, its original and largest web services location. Even though the initial issue that caused the problem was reportedly fixed within hours, the ongoing problems could affect some companies for many more hours if not days, if the Crowdstrike incident's impact is repeated." Estimated Costs While precise figures are difficult to determine, Tenscope has estimated the potential losses caused by the outage. According to TechRadar, major websites can lose around $75 million per hour when down, with Amazon alone responsible for approximately $72 million. Estimated hourly losses for other affected services include: Amazon: $72,831,050 per hour Snapchat: $611,986 per hour Zoom: $532,580 per hour Roblox: $411,187 per hour Fortnite: $399,543 per hour Canva: $342,466 per hour Slack: $194,064 per hour Reddit: $148,402 per hour The incident has highlighted the critical role of cloud infrastructure in modern business and the potential costs when such systems fail. Get Latest News live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Technology Science and around the world.
