3DEXPERIENCE SaaS unavailable for some users in Asia - September 15, 2023

On September 15, 2023 from 10:30 to 12:55 Japan Standard Time, some 3DEXPERIENCE platform SaaS users based in Asia were unable to access or use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

• Unable to access the 3DEXPERIENCE platform
• Unable to use Web Applications for users that were already connected
• Unable to save/open/search from Native Apps

3DEXPERIENCE platform connects to the Internet through several main IP transit providers. These providers operate the main Internet highways worldwide. Our connection is redundant and able to switch from one provider to another if a provider is unavailable. When a major outage occurs, Internet routes automatically change to avoid blocked routes and all IP traffic goes through the available routes.

The issue was due to an Internet routing problem that affected one of the major IP transit provider and impacted Internet traffic. This disabled access to 3DEXPERIENCE services for some users based in Asia (i.e. users that were transiting through this specific provider). 

The problem that occurred with the faulty IP transit provider was partial and intermittent. The provider was informing all networks that their routes were available, with no disruption, and with a worldwide reach. However, when traffic was sent through them, it was partially blocked without informing us of the issue. The faulty IP transit provider did not communicate any unavailability.

Our 24x7 monitoring operations raised immediate but wavering supervision alerts due to the intermittent internet network failure. This made the analysis difficult and resulted in an incorrect impact assessment that delayed the engagement of our customer communication process (https://www.3ds.com/support/cloud).  

Once the Internet routes were changed to avoid going through the faulty IP transit provider, normal Internet traffic was instantly restored at 12:55 Japan Standard Time. The faulty IP transit provider then restored its service at 13:30 Japan Standard Time.

We are taking multiple steps with this IP transit provider (as well as with our other IP transit providers) in order to prevent future occurrence of such an issue, which had never happened before, as well as being able to diagnose in a quicker way in such particular conditions.

Additionally, to minimize possible delays in communicating with customers, we have been working to improve several procedures to support prompt execution of our customer communication process in such cases.

Finally, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this unprecedented event may have caused to   impacted users. We understand how critical the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is to our users and their businesses. We will make sure to learn from this event in order to maintain our customers’ trust and to continue improving on availability of our online services even further.‎