Microsoft is struggling to restore its services following a global outage that has disrupted access to Outlook, Teams and its artificial intelligence platform Copilot, affecting tens of thousands of users and businesses across at least 74 countries.
The disruption, which has lasted more than 14 hours, has also triggered knock-on effects for other technology companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, whose services depend partly on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft said its efforts to resolve the incident were not progressing as expected, despite earlier indications of improvement. In its latest update, the technology giant reported “marginal success” in its recovery efforts, adding that it was continuing to monitor server performance across different regions and assess measures to restore capacity.
The company said its technical teams were reviewing server performance, checking the effectiveness of software patches and completing infrastructure reboots as part of efforts to stabilise affected services.
The scale of the disruption became evident on Thursday when reports of problems with Microsoft services surged on Downdetector, an online platform that tracks service interruptions through user complaints. Reports of Outlook problems peaked at approximately 140,000 globally at around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, representing more than 2,000 times the normal level, according to the monitoring platform.
Although complaints subsequently declined to about 28,000 overnight, users continued reporting problems with Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services. The outage has affected businesses, government institutions, courts and other organisations that depend on Microsoft’s productivity and communication platforms for daily operations.
Microsoft 365 reportedly has more than 430 million users worldwide, underscoring the potential scale of the disruption.
Microsoft attributed the incident to elevated load on its infrastructure, which caused some servers to become unexpectedly unavailable and placed additional pressure on the remaining systems.
The company also ruled out a cybersecurity breach as the cause of the disruption.
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said the incident was not related to a cybersecurity attack, suggesting that the problem stemmed from infrastructure and service availability issues.
However, the company’s difficulty restoring services has raised questions about the resilience of major cloud computing platforms and the risks associated with dependence on a single technology provider.
The disruption has extended beyond Microsoft’s immediate customer base, with artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic also reporting problems with their services.
The development highlights the interconnected nature of the global technology ecosystem, where disruptions to major cloud infrastructure providers can affect multiple platforms and businesses.
In Asia, the outage has affected organisations across several sectors. India’s IndiGo airline reported difficulties receiving emails and advised customers to use alternative support channels.
The Philippines Supreme Court also warned that responses to emails and other transactions could be delayed, while Singapore’s courts reported problems with incoming and outgoing emails.
In Australia, the country’s intelligence and federal police agencies confirmed that their email systems had been affected, although officials described the overall impact as limited. Government agencies in Singapore and Japan have also reported disruptions.
