Microsoft announces service 'restored', global outage over

Microsoft has declared its services are "restored" following a global outage that disrupted operations worldwide. The US-based technology giant acknowledged completion of efforts to resolve the underlying issue, bringing the incident to an end. An X post from Microsoft stated, "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 had previously reported broad recovery for Outlook email and other services the day prior, emphasizing the disruption was tied to a technical issue rather than cyber or AI/agents. The outage impacted at least 74 countries and territories across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, as reported by monitoring site Downdetector.

Initially, Microsoft had attributed the disruption to "elevated load" on its infrastructure. The company issued an apology on Friday for the global outage, noting that a "broad recovery" had been achieved for Outlook email and other services. Microsoft ruled out any malicious cyber or AI activity as the cause, emphasizing the global impact on various Microsoft products, which in turn affected healthcare services, delayed corporate earnings reports, and caused communication difficulties for schools.