Microsoft 365 users faced significant disruptions earlier today as services like Outlook, Teams, and Exchange Online went offline early in the morning. The outage affected businesses and organizations across the globe, with thousands reporting difficulties accessing critical tools for communication and collaboration.
Microsoft attributed the issue to a software change that destabilized servers, initiating a rollback and manual restarts to restore functionality.
Despite progress by mid-afternoon, many users reported continued issues, leaving businesses and individuals frustrated as operations remained stalled into the evening.
Why It Matters: Microsoft 365 is a critical backbone for global communication, scheduling, and productivity, and Monday’s outage underscores the cascading disruptions caused by service interruptions in a cloud-dependent world. Prolonged downtime stalls operations, incurs financial losses, and raises concerns about the resilience of cloud infrastructure and the adequacy of disaster recovery planning for businesses reliant on these tools.
- Timeline and Escalation: Microsoft services began experiencing issues at around 4 a.m. ET, with users reporting difficulties in accessing email, calendars, and files. Complaints peaked at noon, with over 5,000 reports on Downdetector. By 3:35 p.m., Microsoft reported partial recovery but noted delays in restoring full functionality.
- Breadth of the Outage: Core services such as Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive were significantly impacted. Issues ranged from failed email delivery to inaccessible cloud storage, disrupting daily workflows for organizations in sectors such as healthcare, education, and finance.
- Microsoft’s Response: The company attributed the outage to a software update that destabilized servers. Efforts to reverse the change involved manual restarts of affected systems, which contributed to recovery delays. As of late afternoon, some environments remained in an “unhealthy state.”
- Global Impact: The outage affected millions of users across multiple regions. Institutions like the University of Galway in Ireland reported disruptions, and numerous businesses globally cited halted operations due to their reliance on Microsoft tools for essential communication and collaboration.
Go Deeper -> Microsoft 365 is experiencing an outage. Here’s what to know. – CBS News
