A global outage affecting Microsoft services disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other applications used for email, online meetings, file sharing and workplace communication. Users around the world reported that they were unable to open their inboxes, send or receive messages, or use some calendar functions.
Reports of problems with Outlook on Downdetector reached nearly 140,000 at around 18:00 GMT on Thursday. Reports were submitted by users in 74 countries, but the number of reports does not represent the exact number of people affected. Microsoft 365 is used by more than 430 million people.
For some users, Teams continued to work for messaging and online meetings, while other functions remained unavailable or loaded incompletely. Problems were also reported with Copilot, Microsoft's artificial intelligence tool, as well as with other applications in the Microsoft 365 suite.
Servers became unavailable
Microsoft attributed the outage to “increased load” on its infrastructure in several regions. The company уточни, че причината не е увеличаване на трафика, а внезапното спиране на работа на част от сървърите. Това е прехвърлило допълнително натоварване към останалите системи.
In subsequent statements, the technology company said that some servers had failed automated health checks and had been taken out of service. Microsoft began restarting the affected systems and making changes intended to distribute traffic, but later said that recovery efforts were “not going as expected”.
Microsoft Executive Vice President Charles Lamanna said there was no indication that the outage had been caused by a cyberattack or malicious activity. The company did not give a timeframe for the full restoration of all services.
Problems also affected other companies and institutions
Because other technology companies depend on Microsoft's infrastructure, external services were also affected. OpenAI reported problems connecting to Microsoft's services, which prevented some of its tools from working normally. Anthropic also reported difficulties with its connector to Microsoft 365.
The outage affected government systems in Singapore and Japan, an Australian intelligence agency and communications at the Supreme Court of the Philippines. Some medical practices in the United Kingdom warned patients to make urgent inquiries by phone rather than by email or through online forms.
“Microsoft is a huge part of the backbone of the internet, and this reminds us how important email remains,” Australian cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt told the BBC. He said that an outage of this kind could hinder not only work, but also communication about medical appointments, purchases and access to various services.
Sources: bbc.com