Microsoft says it is investigating reports of widespread outages affecting Outlook email and other services that offered through its 365 platform.
The tech giant issued a string of social media posts Thursday acknowledging that users had reported issues with access, throwing a major wrench into business communications across sectors. Outlook as a stand-alone service was deemed operational, along with other Microsoft platforms like Teams and OneDrive. But enterprise and business customers of Microsoft 365 were experiencing problems connecting to email via the Exchange server as well as accessing other services. The U.S. is one of the main regions affected, but Microsoft says it may potentially be a problem for users globally.
Subsequently, reports surfaced of issues preventing users from connecting with Teams, Azure, OneDrive, Copilot and other offerings, with the dashboard of outage detection site DownDetector filled almost entirely by Microsoft.
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“We’re investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas,” the company said. “While we’re working to mitigate impact, we’ve confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.”
In an update, Microsoft then added, “We’ve determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors.”
A web page designed to provide service updates included a bit more information. “We’re restarting and repairing impacted portions of this infrastructure to restore capacity, and reviewing an unexpected increase in a specific type of service traffic to determine whether it’s contributing to the elevated load,” the update said. “In parallel, we’re evaluating options to redirect traffic to alternate infrastructure to expedite relief.”
Media companies were among those across all business sectors whose activities slowed to a crawl due to the tech glitch. Skydance and NBCUniversal employees confirmed to Deadline they were in the dark as of late-morning L.A. time.
The origins of 365 date to the early 2010s, when Microsoft was ramping up its efforts to transition its Office programs Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the cloud. After a meteoric rise as a software maker in the 1980s and 1990s, Microsoft faced government antitrust sanctions and increasing competition before pivoting into cloud and, more recently, AI en route to a $5 trillion valuation.
MORE to come …