Microsoft services fully restored after global outage
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Microsoft said on Saturday that services had fully recovered across Teams, Outlook and its other products, ending a global outage that crippled online communications for businesses and governments for over 24 hours.
“We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,” the company posted on X.
Microsoft had said server issues were behind the problem that also affected its Copilot AI assistant, and that it was not aware of any malicious activity, ruling out AI as the cause.
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.
Microsoft says it is ‘deeply sorry’ for the multi-day outage impacting businesses and governments around the world. The software giant says the problem was a ‘technical issue’ that has been largely addressed.
It affected government agencies from Australia and 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.
Organizations that host Microsoft services on their own servers, rather than in the cloud, were somewhat spared.
Another outage for Microsoft
The outage, reports of which started climbing Thursday, is one of the longest in Microsoft’s history and the second disruption to its services this year.
Microsoft said the outage specifically hit features tied to Exchange Online — its cloud-based email and scheduling hub — leaving unconnected applications operational.
The incident deepens questions about the global reliance on a handful of Big Tech companies that supply both the essential software and the cloud infrastructure that underpins it.
It also highlighted the dependence on Microsoft’s workplace software, with outage reports spiking as employees began their workdays across Asia and Europe, according to Downdetector’s parent company, Ookla.
Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute, more than 1,500 times normal levels.
“It shows how much of the working day now runs through one provider’s email and collaboration tools,” said Luke Kehoe, lead industry analyst at Ookla.
Microsoft shares closed flat at $523.88 on Friday. The stock has gained roughly eight per cent so far this year.
Disruptions and financial losses from the outage could result in numerous insurance…
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