Microsoft Restores Services After Global Outage Hits 74 Countries

GOOBJOOG NEWS | NEW YORK: Microsoft is restoring services following a major global outage that disrupted Outlook, Teams and other workplace applications across 74 countries and territories, affecting businesses, government agencies and millions of users.

The disruption began on Thursday, and continued into Friday, leaving many customers unable to access email, hold online meetings or use other Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft said it had addressed the underlying technical problem and was seeing broad recovery and improved stability, although some users could still experience intermittent access problems and delayed email delivery as restoration continued.

The company attributed the incident to a problem introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a subsequent network change. It ruled out a cyberattack and said the disruption was not related to artificial intelligence or AI agents.

Services affected included Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and the Copilot AI assistant. Some organisations outside the technology sector, including banks, government offices, healthcare providers and courts, also reported operational difficulties.

Outage-tracking platform Downdetector recorded reports from 74 countries and territories within about an hour of the disruption beginning, although the figures represent user reports rather than a confirmed count of people affected.

The economic impact could also be substantial. Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan-based think tank, estimated that lost productivity could approach $7 billion, based on millions of users experiencing disruptions serious enough to affect their work. The firm cautioned that the estimate was preliminary and could increase as the full impact becomes clearer.

Microsoft apologised to customers and business partners, saying it was restoring services gradually to ensure systems remained stable as users reconnected.

The incident has renewed concerns about the reliance of businesses and public institutions on a small number of technology providers, with disruptions to a single major platform capable of affecting operations across multiple sectors and countries.