Disruption in Amazon’s cloud service ripples through internet

Reuters: Web users experienced widespread glitches on Tuesday, from news sites to government services, after Amazon.com Inc’s popular cloud service that hosts their data suffered a technical disruption.

Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, or Amazon S3, had difficulty sending and receiving clients’ data for more than 3-1/2 hours, according to company status reports online.

Amazon did not disclose the cause, and some of its smaller cloud applications in North America continued to have trouble.

The far reach of the disruption underscored the increasing dependence of organisations on the cloud for cheap and secure data storage. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s biggest cloud business.

Apple Inc on its website reported issues with its app store, music-streaming service and other products, which it later resolved. The iPhone maker did not immediately comment on the cause; however, it previously has said it uses Amazon S3 for some storage.