IBM Cloud encounters a Critical Issue mirrorring symptoms of previous system glitches
IBM Cloud experienced a significant outage on Monday, lasting approximately 2 hours and 23 minutes, according to reports. This incident, which started at 12:59 UTC, caused widespread service availability, performance, and access problems.
The outage shares similar symptoms with previous incidents in May and June, with users reporting recurring login issues and access problems to core cloud services. These recurring problems have led analysts and cloud experts to describe IBM's Cloud as having critical architectural weaknesses and a single point of failure in its control plane.
The issues are thought to be linked to at least some prior incidents, reflecting deeper systemic challenges in the cloud platform's design and operation. Notably, the May 20, June 2, and June 4 outages were traced to updates made to IBM’s Cloud Logs service, which altered internal traffic patterns, causing workload spikes that overwhelmed IBM's Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) system.
IBM's engineers were actively investigating the issue and assessing the scope of impact at the start of the outage. While recent IBM Cloud status updates confirm ongoing efforts to resolve service availability and access issues, they do not indicate that the root architectural problems have been fully addressed yet.
The outage affected a total of 27 services and 10 IBM cloud regions. This incident is another blow to IBM Cloud's reputation, as it is not typically listed among the world's top five cloud providers. In contrast, competitors such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, and Huawei are commonly recognised as leading players in the cloud market.
Despite these challenges, IBM has reported growth in other areas. Red Hat, a subsidiary of IBM, posted a 16% growth, attributed to the recent debut of new mainframe and Power hardware. IBM also reported a 21% year-over-year growth for its hybrid infrastructure offerings, aligning with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna's growth strategy, which focuses on an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities.
In light of these recent incidents, IBM Cloud customers may want to consider clearing their browser cache and retrying their login attempts. However, the recurring nature of these outages underscores the need for IBM to address the underlying architectural issues to regain client trust and ensure the resilience and accountability of its cloud services.
[1] Source: TechCrunch, August 11, 2025 [2] Source: The Register, August 11, 2025 [3] Source: Data Centre Dynamics, August 11, 2025 [4] Source: IBM Cloud Status Page, August 11, 2025 [5] Source: ZDNet, August 11, 2025
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