Microsoft has experienced one of the largest outages across its services. Outlook, Microsoft 365, Teams, Copilot, and OneDrive were unavailable to many users for nearly 24 hours. The issues affected not only everyday consumers, but also organizations for which the company’s cloud services are an essential part of daily operations.
The disruptions began on Thursday. The company attributed them to an increased load on its server infrastructure. Since then, the corporation has regularly published updates on the recovery progress; however, initial measures did not allow all services to be quickly restored to working order.
On Friday, Microsoft reported that recovery was proceeding in phases and affecting various segments of the Microsoft 365 infrastructure. Later, the company noted improvements in service availability and email delivery, but warned that some users might still experience disruptions.
However, the fallout from the outage proved to be much wider than just email issues.
Companies across various industries were affected. As Reuters reports, the disruptions hit OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which experienced issues connecting to Microsoft tools. In addition, Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air faced disruptions to their email-based customer support services, as also reported by The Guardian.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the outage also affected major international companies. In particular, logistics giant Maersk experienced problems with email and notifications, while Euronext’s operations were impacted by communications disruptions.
Another consequence was a shift in business plans for the American company Workhorse, an electric commercial vehicle manufacturer. As reported by Euronews, the company postponed the release of its financial results and the accompanying investor conference call to Monday.
The fallout could be particularly severe for small businesses. According to an estimate by Ashwin Pal, a partner at Australian consulting firm RSM, cited by ABC News, the total damage to Australian businesses could reach billions of dollars. At the same time, smaller companies will be hit harder than major corporations because they often lack fallback systems to keep operating. Some businesses were even forced to revert to using fax machines.
The issues also affected government agencies, healthcare facilities, police departments, and educational institutions. In the UK, certain police forces temporarily asked citizens to report urgent matters by phone because online forms had stopped working. Some healthcare providers warned patients that emails might not reach their recipients.
In its latest update, the corporation reported positive momentum: service availability and email delivery speeds are gradually improving. Nevertheless, recovery is not yet complete, and users in certain regions may continue to experience disruptions.