Microsoft is working to restore Outlook and other services following a global outage that disrupted email, Microsoft Teams and its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, leaving businesses and government institutions unable to communicate.
The technology giant said on Thursday that efforts to resolve the hours-long disruption were not progressing as expected, forcing it to explore alternative solutions.
Microsoft attributed the outage to “elevated load” on its infrastructure, which affected connectivity across multiple regions.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected,” the company said in an update on X.
“We’re identifying alternative workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity,” it added, without giving a timeline for the full restoration of services.
The disruption spread globally within an hour, affecting Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, according to outage-tracking platform Downdetector.
A map published by Downdetector on X showed that users across the Americas, parts of Europe, Asia and Africa were affected.
Among the affected institutions was New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry, which issued a notice warning that its ability to receive emails had been disrupted.
The ministry said the outage also affected New Zealand’s embassies, consulates and representative offices worldwide.
Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports of service disruptions in the Americas before confirming that the problem was affecting Microsoft 365 connectivity across multiple regions.
Microsoft 365 is the company’s cloud-based subscription service, which includes widely used applications such as Outlook and Teams.
“We’ve determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors,” the company said.
“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” it added.
Thousands of users also reported difficulties accessing Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector.
As the outage persisted, Microsoft issued several updates detailing its efforts to restore services, including attempts to redirect user traffic away from affected servers.
In an update shortly after 6pm Eastern Time (2300 GMT), the company said it was observing limited recovery as it worked to reroute traffic.
“As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect,” Microsoft said.
Downdetector subsequently recorded a decline in reports of disruptions around 0450 GMT in Washington and Hong Kong.
However, Microsoft had yet to provide a definitive timeline for the full restoration of services. – AFP
