Alibaba’s cloud computing arm, Alibaba Cloud, issued an apology on June 28th for a malfunction that affected an unknown number of its user base. This malfunction drew massive criticisms online. The total number of affected users nor the total amount in transaction value lost is known at this time.
According to the company, the error occurred during the operation and maintenance process when engineers tried to change a verification procedure. The operation triggered an unknown bug in the coding, which disabled a few internal IPs. The malfunction lasted roughly half an hour, from 16:21 to 16:50.
The malfunction affected services of message queues, network storage systems and object storage services. Some T-mall and Taobao retailers said transaction records of some of the orders went missing. Users complained the malfunction interrupted their businesses and they don’t think they will be compensated for their losses.
Alibaba Cloud did not reply to our request for comment before publication.
As the cloud computing arm of China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud provides could-based solutions and services to businesses, websites, and applications, including Taobao and Tmall. Apart from powering products of Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud provides services across industries, ranging from e-commerce to manufacturing, including the low-cost air line AirAsia, international auditing firm KPMG and domestic financial service company Zhejiang Securities.
According to a report by Synergy Research Group, Alibaba surpassed IBM to become the world’s fourth-biggest provider of cloud infrastructure. It comes in after Amazon, Microsoft and Google.