This Monday, millions of users around the world noticed that many of their favorite applications stopped working or were very slow. The culprit? A massive outage in Amazon Web Services, better known as Amazon AWS, the cloud computing giant.

If you use Fortnite, Snapchat, Signal, Robinhood, Coinbase, or even some Amazon services like Prime Video, you've probably noticed the outage. But what exactly is AWS, and why is its outage causing such a stir? Here's a detailed breakdown.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, is Amazon's cloud computing platform and is the largest and most widely adopted in the world. AWS provides essential digital infrastructure for many businesses, offering data storage, processing, databases, and many other features over the internet, without these companies needing their own physical servers or data centers.

In simple terms, AWS is the technological "backbone" that enables many applications and websites to function. When you open an app or website that uses AWS, your data and the operations you perform are processed in Amazon data centers, distributed across different regions of the world to ensure speed and security. That's why when AWS experiences a problem in one of its data centers, many apps that depend on those services begin to fail or run very slowly.

Monday's outage originated in the Virginia region (USA), where high levels of errors were detected in one of AWS's core services, specifically DynamoDB, a database that many applications use as a backbone to manage information in real time. Amazon confirmed that they were actively working on several solutions to recover, but in the meantime, the impact was massive and global.

Impact of the outage and why it affected so many apps

Monday's problem showed how dependent the internet is on a few cloud giants. When AWS had the outage,Many large and popular apps experienced outages or slowness. For example, users reported that Fortnite, Snapchat, Signal, Robinhood, and Coinbase were down or unable to operate normally. Even Amazon's own services like Prime Video and Alexa experienced issues. This is because AWS not only hosts websites, but is also responsible for storage, databases, computing, artificial intelligence, and all kinds of digital services that apps need to function. Therefore, when AWS experiences a technical problem, it acts almost like a domino effect that affects all the services that depend on its infrastructure.

Although AWS offers redundancy and security by distributing its centers across multiple "availability zones," this time the failure was serious enough to significantly impact its services and, in turn, end users.

What other companies offer services like AWS?

Although Amazon AWS is the clear leader in the cloud computing market with a significant share, there are other technology giants competing with similar offerings. These companies also offer robust cloud service platforms that are options for companies looking for alternatives or to diversify their infrastructure. The main ones are:

These platforms compete with AWS on price, functionality, data center locations, and the developer ecosystem. However, AWS's massive scale, with over 200 services available and its extensive global infrastructure, is one of its greatest competitive advantages.

Monday's AWS outage was a powerful reminder of how much the web and our favorite apps depend on a few giant cloud infrastructures. While AWS is the leader and offers a robust service, this situation also highlights the importance of businesses considering multi-cloud strategies or contingencies to prevent a single outage from impacting their users so severely.