Microsoft’s global outage extends into 2nd day, company not aware of
A more than 12-hour outage of Microsoft Outlook and Teams crippled communications for businesses and governments globally on Friday, forcing some organizations to revert to fax machines and halting at least one bond repurchase in Europe.
Microsoft said server issues were behind the incident that also affected its Copilot AI assistant and that a broader rollout of software fixes was starting to stabilize the system. It said it was not aware of any malicious activity.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it was trying different ways to identify the cause of the problem and get its servers back online, using “a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure.”
Microsoft said in a new update that it was seeing “broader improvements” in North America and much of Europe.
Outlook and Teams are two of the most widely used workplace applications, with hundreds of millions of users. The outage prevented people from performing essential functions such as sending emails, managing calendars and hosting virtual meetings.
It affected government agencies from Australia to Japan to the United States, caused delays at trading firms, hindered some companies from publishing earnings and prompted airlines to warn customers of communication lags, according to public statements.
The outage is one of the longest in Microsoft’s history and the second disruption to its services this year.
Questions about tech reliance, cloud systems
Organizations that host Microsoft services on their own servers, rather than in the cloud, were somewhat spared.
Microsoft said the outage specifically hit features tied to Exchange Online — its cloud-based email and scheduling hub — leaving unconnected applications operational.
More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft said on its website, with the outage affecting individual users, companies and some government operations.
Tens of thousands of Microsoft users across Canada and the United States were struggling to access Outlook’s email services, Copilot’s AI software and other essential programs Thursday in a widespread outage. As of Thursday evening, Microsoft said it was returning some of its affected servers to full service.
Unity Health Toronto said its teams are experiencing difficulties sending and receiving emails, but that patient and resident care is not affected by the outage.
In Montreal, the CHUM hospital said the outage affected appointment requests and some internal activities.
Via Rail said some customers were not receiving emails about their trips and advised passengers to check its train tracker or sign up for text notifications.
Some departments at federal, provincial and municipal governments across Canada also experienced email disruptions.
In Australia, where the spy agency and federal police were among…
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