MILLIONS of users around the world have been hit by a major Microsoft outage, leaving businesses and individuals struggling to access emails and essential online services.
The disruption, which began on Thursday (November 12), has affected Microsoft’s widely used Microsoft 365 platform, including Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and its AI assistant Copilot.
Users in the UK and across the world have reported difficulties accessing their email accounts, sending and receiving messages and using other Microsoft applications.
The problems have continued into Friday morning, with Microsoft working around the clock to restore services.
At its peak, the outage prompted almost 130,000 reports of problems with Outlook alone on monitoring website Downdetector, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
Microsoft initially attributed the problems to elevated demand and connectivity issues affecting parts of its global infrastructure.
The company said some of its servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, resulting in increased pressure on the remaining infrastructure.
Attempts to restore services have proved challenging, with Microsoft acknowledging that some of the changes introduced to improve performance were not working as expected.
However, the company has since reported some positive signs of improved server stability following the application of a technical patch involving authentication and network routing.
The outage has also affected organisations and businesses internationally, including government departments and companies relying on Microsoft’s cloud-based systems.
There have been reports of disruption to government IT infrastructure in countries including Japan, Australia and Singapore, while some international airlines have experienced problems with customer email support.
Microsoft has stressed that there is currently no indication the incident is the result of a cyberattack or malicious activity.
The company says it is continuing to monitor the situation, increase available capacity and work towards restoring services across affected regions.
There is currently no confirmed timeframe for a complete return to normal, and users could experience intermittent problems as services gradually recover.
The incident is another reminder of how heavily businesses, public services and individuals depend on a relatively small number of major technology providers to keep everyday communications and operations running.
Microsoft is expected to publish a more detailed explanation of the cause once the incident has been fully resolved.
