Microsoft hit by global outages: What happened and why?

A global Microsoft service outage has disrupted tools including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, affecting government agencies in the United States, Australia, and Japan, as well as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. The Jerusalem Post reports the disruption stretched into Asia-Pacific business hours on Friday after impacting thousands of users in the U.S. Hindustan Times - World News notes that schools and government departments have also been affected, with some U.S. government websites directing users to contact offices by phone.

In the aviation sector, Gulf News reports that Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air experienced disruptions to their email support services, though Air India stated its flight operations and customer communication systems remained unaffected.

Microsoft has stated the outage was caused by server problems and not a cyber-security incident, according to BBC News and Hindustan Times - World News. While the company reported observing some partial recovery in regions where adjustments were made to affected servers, it noted on X that these actions have not yet led to a sustained recovery. The company is currently reviewing additional actions to improve infrastructure stability and boost capacity.

At its peak, Downdetector showed more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the U.S. around 1 p.m. ET on Thursday. The Jerusalem Post reports this is the second disruption to Microsoft 365 services this year.

Brief written by urgent.news from BBC News, Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem Post Tech & Start-Ups, Hindustan Times - World News, Gulf News — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.