Major online stores including Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Boots were among the many sites that failed this morning, in what is being termed the hour the internet ‘broke’. The e-commerce delivery expert ParcelHero estimates retailers across the UK, Europe and US will have lost around $1bn because of the international outage.
ParcelHero’s Head of Consumer Research, David Jinks M.I.L.T., says: ‘Amazon alone currently turns over $950,000 a minute. It was one of the quickest sites to get back online but some organisations were down for around an hour.
‘We believe retail worldwide will have lost around $1bn. Time really is money in the era of e-commerce.
‘According to the BBC and other sources, the content delivery network (CDN) run by Fastly has admitted responsibility. Many e-commerce and media companies use the service, which helps sites speed up loading times. When such services fail, it impacts on the whole site.
‘The problem also hit the UK Government’s website and payment provider PayPal. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was also down, which impacted on other retailers using its cloud services who may not use Fastly directly.
‘It is believed the problems were localised, affecting specific locations across Europe and the US.
‘Fastly was quick to restore services and implement a fix, but the problem does underline how vulnerable retailers are if major international cloud computing services fail. Where possible, retailers need to have a Plan B to bypass various systems and keep trading if they hit a problem. Imagine the money Amazon and its marketplace traders would lose if this had happened on Prime Day or Black Friday?
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