Microsoft says all services are working again after global outage lasting over 24 hours
US technology company Microsoft said on Saturday that a global outage of its Microsoft 365 services, which lasted more than 24 hours, has been resolved. The disruption hit businesses and government bodies in many countries.
The US technology company Microsoft said on Saturday that a global outage lasting more than 24 hours, which affected its Microsoft 365 suite of applications, has ended. The suite is used by businesses and government bodies around the world, and the disruption caused communication problems in dozens of countries.
"We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions," the company wrote on X.
What was affected
Applications including Teams, Outlook and Copilot were hit. According to Ookla, a web testing and network diagnostics company, the outage began at around 17:25 UTC on Thursday. People were unable to send emails or hold online meetings.
A spokesperson for Germany's Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization said the outage had no major impact on federal government functions, but it significantly affected German businesses. Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was severely affected, with staff having to use paper records instead of those stored online.
Downdetector, which monitors online outages, logged more than 7.4 million problem reports worldwide.
Cause
Microsoft has said it is "not aware" of any outside interference behind the outage and blamed server issues. It was one of the longest disruptions in the company's history and the second this year.
The incident highlights how heavily governments and businesses depend on a small number of Big Tech companies. The Microsoft problems are so far believed to be unconnected to the major communications outage that has hit US aviation.
