Microsoft outage spills into Asia-Pacific business hours
The outage hit government agencies in Australia, Japan and the United States, as well as companies including OpenAI and Anthropic. It is the second disruption to Microsoft's 365 services this year, raising concerns that repeated failures could push corporate clients to question Microsoft's reliability.
A prolonged Microsoft 365 outage has impacted government agencies and businesses across Australia, Japan, and the United States. The disruption, affecting services like Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, extended into Asia-Pacific business hours on Friday as the tech giant battled server issues. Microsoft acknowledged applying adjustments to affected servers, but these changes did not lead to a complete recovery. Partial recovery was observed in the regions where these adjustments were implemented.
The outage, which began earlier in the week, has raised concerns about Microsoft's reliability, as it marks the second disruption to the company's 365 services this year. Downdetector, which tracks outages, recorded over 18,000 reports of Outlook problems in the US at 11:30 p.m. ET (0430 GMT) and multiple service outages in the Asia-Pacific region, including India, Australia, and Japan.
Microsoft's service health notice indicated that features depending on Exchange Online and email were affected while elements not reliant on Exchange Online remained functional. The company stated it is not aware of any malicious activity causing the outage and that Exchange Online is Microsoft's cloud-based messaging platform delivering email, calendar, contacts, and tasks.
Australian Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke confirmed that Microsoft believed the issue was not a result of a cyberattack. Burke noted that the impact was primarily on email systems, similar to a situation involving the cyber security company CrowdStrike, where an update had gone awry. Microsoft is actively reviewing additional actions to improve overall infrastructure stability.
Written by urgent.news from The Jakarta Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
Also reported by 4 other outlets
- ‘Looks like we’ll have to talk to people’: Australia sent back to time before email with major Microsoft outage theguardian.com
- Microsoft outage LIVE updates: 14 hours on, tech giant struggles to restore Outlook, Teams, 365 hindustantimes.com
- Microsoft outage cuts Queensland Health from emails, Teams theage.com.au
- Microsoft outage cuts Queensland Health from emails, Teams smh.com.au
