Xero, a cloud-based accounting software company, experienced a significant global outage on Wednesday morning, impacting around 4.2 million small business users, particularly in Australia.

The outage began just before 8 AM AEST and was reported by over 1,000 users on the outage monitor Down Detector, affecting customers in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Xero attributed the issue to a problem with Amazon Web Services (AWS), its third-party provider, and is investigating the matter with urgency.

AWS has confirmed that it identified the cause of the outage and is actively working to resolve it.

In the meantime, Xero has encouraged customers to check their status page for updates and noted that some users were beginning to regain access.

A spokesperson for Xero expressed gratitude to customers for their patience and apologized for any inconvenience caused.

This incident follows a recent significant outage involving CrowdStrike, which disrupted nearly 10 million computers across various sectors, including airlines and banks.

Notably, this outage comes on the heels of a major global incident on July 19 caused by a planned Microsoft upgrade that affected numerous sectors.

Xero, headquartered in Wellington, serves over 4.2 million customers globally in 180 countries and previously laid off 15% of its workforce amid a broader tech industry downturn.

During the previous outage, many office workers encountered the 'blue screen of death' until the issue was resolved.

The CrowdStrike outage was attributed to a problematic software update that caused widespread system crashes.

CrowdStrike, responsible for the Microsoft upgrade, was quick to implement a fix to address the chaos caused by the outage.