Microsoft restores services after global outage

Microsoft declared on Saturday that it had fully restored its services following a widespread outage that lasted several hours. The company announced on X that it had "completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions." Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, and AI assistant Copilot, experienced interruptions, as reported by users in more than 70 countries and territories.

Downdetector, an online tracker, recorded reports from these regions. The outage affected various sectors, such as governments, courts, healthcare services, businesses, airlines, and banks. Governments in countries like Japan, Singapore, and Australia reported that the hours-long episode impacted some of their operations. Microsoft stated that over 430 million people use its 365 apps.

The issues began around midday on Thursday in the U.S. Microsoft apologized for the disruptions on Friday, attributing the outage to an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. The company emphasized that the incident was "not related to cyber" or artificial intelligence agents.

This incident is a recent example of the cascading problems that can occur when numerous communications and technology platforms rely on a single provider. Some lawmakers outside the U.S. have highlighted the consequences of overreliance on American tech, noting that many office workers felt like they were on a "virtual snow day" with no emails coming or going.