Amazon apologizes for Christmas Eve disruption affecting Netflix

Amazon.com Inc. apologized for a disruption that affected customers of its cloud-computing services starting on Dec. 24, saying that it’s taking steps to prevent a recurrence.

Netflix Inc. said last week that many customers in the Americas were unable to access online content on Christmas Eve because of a disruption caused by Amazon’s Web storage and computing system. Amazon didn’t identify Netflix in its statement, which was posted online on Dec. 29, according to Tera Randall, a spokeswoman for Amazon Web Services.

“We want to apologize,” Seattle-based Amazon said. “We know how critical our services are to our customers’ businesses, and we know this disruption came at an inopportune time for some of our customers.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has expanded into computing delivered over the Internet. Occasional outages can undermine confidence in such cloud-computing services.

The disruption began at at 12:24 p.m. Seattle time on Dec. 24 and continued until the following day, according to Amazon.