What we know about the global Microsoft outage
- Published: A major global Microsoft outage has led to disruptions or complete service failures, impacting emails and AI products.
- Outage Details: Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Outlook, and AI software Copilot, experienced "connectivity problems." Users reported varying access, with many unable to send/receive emails, access files, or view calendar details.
- Affected Users: More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps globally. Monitoring site Downdetector received 140,000 reports of Outlook issues from 74 countries, suggesting a much larger affected population.
- Impact on Services: OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems due to the outage. Government agencies and UK GP practices also experienced issues.
Microsoft's Response:
- Microsoft denied a cyber-security incident and attributed the outage to "elevated load" on its infrastructure, where servers became unexpectedly unavailable, causing increased traffic on remaining servers.
- They reported "early signs of stabilisation" but service capacity hadn't returned to normal.
Expert Analysis:
- Australian cyber-security expert Troy Hunt highlighted the far-reaching consequences, emphasizing Microsoft's critical role in the internet backbone and the importance of email for work and daily life.
- Paul Spain from New Zealand's Gorilla Technology firm noted the frustration for businesses and users due to the loss of a business day caused by the offline services.