Microsoft Restores Services After Major Global Outage Lasting Over 24 Hours

New Delhi, November 14 (Daily Kiran) : Microsoft has announced the full restoration of its consumer and enterprise services following a major outage that lasted more than 24 hours. The company updated its service status page, indicating that “all products are operational,” signaling the end of a global technical disruption that impacted millions of users around the world.

The outage began on Thursday and continued to affect businesses, government agencies, and individual users until Friday. Users experienced interruptions with Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, SharePoint Online, and other cloud services, leading to disrupted email services and virtual meetings. Microsoft had earlier noted that services were being gradually restored, but some users might still face delays in email delivery and intermittent access issues.

According to the company, the outage was not caused by a cyberattack or any artificial intelligence-related incident. An investigation revealed that a technical issue arose during a network upgrade aimed at increasing capacity, which became apparent during subsequent network changes. Charles Lamana, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President, confirmed that there were no signs of malicious activity.

In a statement on the social media platform X, Microsoft expressed regret for the inconvenience caused to customers and partners, emphasizing the importance of user trust.

The core of the problem was identified as Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud-based email service. This disruption also affected other services, including Outlook, Teams, Copilot, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Defender XDR. Users reported difficulties in accessing calendars, scheduling meetings, and retrieving work-related information through Copilot.

Initially, Microsoft attributed the issue to increased infrastructure load in several regions. However, further investigation revealed that several servers had suddenly become unavailable, causing additional strain on the network. The company clarified that the issue was not due to an increase in user numbers or a spike in traffic.

Restoring services proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Some servers became unresponsive again after being restarted, leading engineers to implement alternative solutions. Microsoft gradually adjusted traffic management to restore services while monitoring stability at each phase to prevent further major issues.

In India, users began reporting problems late Thursday night, with complaints peaking on Friday. The airline IndiGo also reported that its email support channel was affected, causing difficulties for customers trying to send emails, although other support channels continued to operate normally.

Microsoft 365, one of the largest workplace software platforms, is used by over 430 million people. The company has stated that a detailed post-incident report will be released once the incident review is complete.