AWS outage causes major issues for local businesses

CHICAGO - Amazon began reporting problems just after 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, so if you noticed any interruptions to accessing your work computer remotely, noticed your RING cam not working or couldn't get on Disney+ — this was likely the culprit.

And at this late hour, things are still not fully resolved.

"It's a huge impact for us," said Joe Stefani, President of Rolling Meadows-based Desert Cactus, an e-commerce company that uses Amazon's platform and distribution network to get its flags, stickers, lanyards and license plate frames out to customers. 

Tuesday has not been a good day.

"With the AWS outage, it's not only affecting websites like Facebook, McDonald's and Netflix, it's affecting other areas as well that consumers are not seeing, which is the back-end of Amazon, which 3rd party retailers like us rely on," Stefani said.

At 11:37 a.m. CST, Amazon began reporting major back-end problems with its AWS services, causing outages across multiple areas of the economy, from airlines to entertainment to banking. 

Among those apps and services that experienced outages: Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, Disney+, the McDonald's app, Ring, Amazon Prime, Amazon Music and Amazon Alexa.

DOWNLOAD THE FOX 32 NEWS APP FOR BREAKING NEWS ALERTS

"Some people's Ring products aren't going to be working. Roombas… your vacuum may have stopped working for you, so it can affect little things in your daily life that you really don't think about," said Carl Prouty with Abt Electronics. 

Tuesday's outage speaks to the dependence the American economy has on a select few tech giants.

"It's a little bit scary," said Prouty. "As we've seen over the last few months, a couple outages can have a huge impact, especially given the time of the season right now."

Just before 7 p.m., Amazon reported many of its services back online, with the exception of a handful, including AWS SSO. 

As of Tuesday night, nothing nefarious was believed to have been behind the outage.