Microsoft ‘deeply sorry’ as outage triggers global chaos

Microsoft issued an apology on November 13 for a global outage that disrupted numerous public services and businesses, as it reported a "broad recovery" for Outlook email and other affected services. The company confirmed the cause of the disruption was a technical issue, ruling out any malicious cyber or AI activity. The outage impacted several Microsoft products and services, causing disruptions to healthcare services, delayed corporate earnings reports, and communication challenges in schools.

Microsoft services were disrupted in 74 countries, affecting users across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The disruption was particularly severe in the United Kingdom, where the National Health Service (NHS) staff reported difficulties in referring patient details and a growing backlog. Airlines in India warned of delayed customer queries due to the outage.

Immigration New Zealand halted visa application processing, and Japan's economy, trade, and industry minister warned of significant impacts. In London's financial district, users expressed frustration with Microsoft's AI assistant, Copilot, which was unavailable. Small businesses were cautioned about their vulnerability to such technology failures, according to the Australian Computer Society.

Microsoft initially attributed the disruption to "elevated load" on its infrastructure and later confirmed it was caused by an issue during a network capacity upgrade.