Microsoft Global Outage Disrupts Services in 74 Countries

A global technical outage hit Microsoft services on Thursday, affecting 74 countries and territories, including businesses, healthcare institutions, schools, and government operations. The outage caused significant disruptions, prompting Microsoft to apologize to customers and business partners. According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, the disruption affected users across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The outage had severe consequences for healthcare services in the United Kingdom, where staff handling emergency calls struggled to access patient information and make referrals through normal channels. Rachel Harrison, public services head at the GMB union, stated that the problem created a significant backlog in the country’s National Health Service. This disruption highlights the critical reliance on Microsoft services for essential operations.

Microsoft initially attributed the disruption to elevated demand on its infrastructure. However, in an updated explanation, the company stated that the incident resulted from a problem during an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced following a recent network change. Microsoft added that the underlying issue had been addressed, and service restoration was continuing.

The disruption also impacted airlines in India, including IndiGo and Akasa Air, which warned that their email support services had been affected. This potentially prevented them from receiving customer enquiries. Immigration New Zealand announced that the disruption had forced it to suspend the processing of all visa applications, highlighting the far-reaching consequences of the outage.

Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ryosei Akazawa, warned of a significant impact, noting that Microsoft’s products were used by a large number of people and organisations. In London’s financial district, some workers expressed concern over their dependence on Outlook and Microsoft’s artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot, for daily business operations.

The Australian Computer Society called for a national review of technology infrastructure risks, warning that small businesses might struggle to continue operations when essential services such as Outlook become unavailable. Its chief executive, Prins Ralston, stated that critical systems should not fail without adequate alternative arrangements.

Microsoft reported a broad recovery across its services, including Outlook email, and was working to restore services to the remaining affected customers and regions. The company expressed regret over the disruption, stating it was caused by a technical issue and was not related to any cyberattack or artificial intelligence activity. Reports of service disruptions on Downdetector began declining around 0900 GMT on Friday.

Key points

• Microsoft services were disrupted in 74 countries and territories.
• The outage affected businesses, healthcare institutions, schools, and government operations.
• Microsoft attributed the disruption to a problem during a network capacity upgrade.