Virginia (US) – A massive internet outage stemming from errors in Amazon cloud services on Monday morning demonstrated just how many people rely on the corporate behemoth’s computational infrastructure everyday — and laid bare the vulnerabilities of an increasingly concentrated system.

But despite its omnipresence, most users do not know what — or where — the cloud is.

Here is what to know about the data centres in Northern Virginia where the outage originated, and what the malfunction reveals about a rapidly evolving industry.

Renting internet infrastructure

Cloud computing is a technology that allows companies to remotely access massive computing equipment and services without having to purchase and maintain physical infrastructure.

In other words, businesses ranging from Snapchat

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