Hours-long disruption hits Outlook, Teams and government operations as Microsoft battles major worldwide outage
Recovery remains uneven
Microsoft said it was testing different methods to find the problem and restore its servers. The company described its work as a measured effort to identify and repair affected infrastructure.
In its latest update, Microsoft said recovery had advanced in phases across affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure. It also warned that service health was variable and capacity remained below its usual level.
Companies report disruption
Workhorse Group Inc., a U.S.-based industrial technology company, postponed a conference call about its quarterly earnings because of the outage. Hong Kong businessperson Danny Lau said his aluminum firm’s Outlook accounts could not receive updates from U.S. customers. Lau said a prolonged disruption could affect the company’s production timeline.
IndiGo said disruptions to its email support affected its ability to receive customer queries. The airline said its other support channels remained available and its flights were operating normally.
Government operations affected
The Philippines’ Supreme Court said the Microsoft 365 outage had affected some operations, including email responses. Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said government IT infrastructure was also affected and officials were watching developments.
Burke said he had spoken with Microsoft’s top executive in Australia and the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator. He told reporters in Sydney that Microsoft did not believe the issue was a cyberattack, and suspected an update problem similar to the CrowdStrike incident.
Key points
- Microsoft said recovery was progressing, but service capacity had not returned to normal.
- Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 Outlook problem reports earlier Thursday.
- The outage affected business and government operations, including email services.
- IndiGo said its flight operations and other support channels remained unaffected.