Amazon’s AWS Operations Return to Normalcy Following Outage Impacting Publishers’ Websites

Posted By: Sophia Andrew

Posted On: June 14, 2023

Amazon’s cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services, had a problem on Tuesday. This caused trouble for websites that use the service.

The issue was connected to a part of Amazon Web Services called AWS Lambda. This part lets customers run code for different types of applications.

After about two hours, Amazon said on its website that most of the affected services were working again, and they were still fixing the rest. By 6:30 pm E.T., they said everything was back to normal.

The problem happened in the Northern Virginia region where Amazon has data centers. Some customers may have had trouble signing in or getting support from AWS. Other services were also affected because of the issue with AWS Lambda.

The company didn’t give more information about what caused the problem. Amazon Web Services is a big player in the cloud industry, and it serves many major businesses, like Netflix and Coca-Cola, as well as government agencies.

The outage was first confirmed around 3 p.m. ET, but it wasn’t clear how many people were affected. Some companies, including news organizations like The Verge and Penn Live, had issues. The Associated Press couldn’t run their websites while covering breaking news about former President Donald Trump appearing in court in Miami.

Delta Air Lines also had some problems, with a slight delay in phone calls. But it didn’t affect bookings, flights, or airport operations. This incident reminds us of a longer outage that happened in December 2021, which affected many U.S. companies for more than five hours.

The outage occurred while Amazon was hosting a two-day security conference in Anaheim, California, to promote its cloud services to clients and other interested companies. However, spending on this service has been reduced by companies, causing slower growth in the most recent quarter.