A Cloud break we never saw coming

An AWS Cloud outage caused chaos across the world in disrupting services from beds to banks. What can be a solution?

- SREYA DEB

THE CRASH OF the Amazon Web Services serverlast week resulted ina global domino effect with over 2,000 companies under the AWS umbrella losing functionality for a couple of hours. As the biggest Cloud provider with nearly 30% of the market reliant on AWS, the lengthy outage caused collective panic, as it familiarised us with the possibility that the seemingly omniscient 'Cloud' canalso havea malfunction.

The crash disrupted business that work with AWS, affecting customer experiences worldwide in everything from messaging apps to temperature-controlled smart beds.Astatement from the manufacturers of said smartbeds, Eight Sleep, said the company will look into developing a Bluetooth option for smartbeds to counter future malfunctions. Among the three malfunctions, the most pertinent one was the malfunctioning of DynamoDB, which is where all AWS customers store their data, and all the corresponding DNSs (Domain Name Systems)are also stored. For hours, users were confounded as to the glitches on multiple apps and platforms they use daily for financial transactions, mobility, ordering food, communication, bookings, etc.