Surge in Microsoft outages frustrates UK home workers
HOME WORKERS were left frustrated for several hours yesterday after an outage at Microsoft left its Outlook and Teams services out of action around the world.
Customers reported difficulties in accessing Microsoft 365 services and its cloud platform Azure shortly after 7am UK time and it was only after 12.30pm that the group of products’ status page said it was fully up and running again.
Microsoft said the problems were due to a recent alteration to its network configuration and it took steps to “roll back” the change. Along with Office and Teams services, Sharepoint Online, Onedrive for Business and Microsoft Graph were also affected.
Microsoft did not disclose the number of users affected by the disruption, but data from outage tracking website Downdetector showed more than 4,000 incidents on Outlook and more than 2,000 on Teams in Britain at the peak of the incident.
Online gamers using Microsoft’s Xbox Live also reported outages, with more than 1,400 listed on Downdetector. Azure’s status page showed services were impacted in Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Only services in China and its platform for governments were not hit. Azure has 15m corporate customers and over 500m active users, according to Microsoft data. Complaints quickly flooded social media after the outage.
Twitter user Preeti Ishaqzaadi tweeted: “Is @Outlook down for everyone or am I the only one having a stressful start to the day?”
Another user tweeted that the connection in their Teams meeting was so bad it was as if “everyone’s using dialup”. The outages came as Microsoft said its quarterly profit fell 12pc.
The poor performance, it said, reflected the economic uncertainty that led to its decision this month to cut 10,000 workers. Its share price plunged by the most in three weeks after it warned of a slowdown in cloud and business software sales.
Shares were down as much as 4.2pc to $231.97, bringing gloom to analysts who consider the stock to be a bellwether for the market’s performance over the last quarter.