Microsoft issued a public apology on Friday for a global outage of its online services that began on Thursday and disrupted users and organizations around the world. The company said it had "largely" restarted services and was continuing recovery work to restore full functionality.
On the X social platform Microsoft wrote: "We deeply regret the disruptions this incident caused for our customers and partners. We understand the trust placed in our services and take that responsibility very seriously." The company added that it had resolved the original issue and was proceeding with system restores for affected customers and regions.
According to Microsoft, the operational problems were caused by an overload in the company’s infrastructure. The outage affected Outlook email, the Teams communications platform and the Copilot AI assistant. Microsoft emphasized that the incident was a technical failure rather than the result of a cyberattack or an artificial intelligence malfunction.
Scope and international impact
Monitoring site Downdetector reported that the disruption spread globally: Microsoft products became unusable in at least 74 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. New Zealand issued a warning that the Microsoft software outage was affecting the reception of electronic mail and was impacting all of the country’s embassies, consulates and overseas representations.
Responses from authorities and organizations
Rachel Harrison, the GMB union’s lead for public services, said the failure had serious consequences for UK health services, although urgent interventions were spared the worst effects. Italian consumer group Codacons announced it would file a complaint if Outlook does not automatically compensate citizens and companies affected by the disruption.
Related incidents and follow-up
Microsoft noted past technical outages as context: in July 2024 a software update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused computing outages that affected airports, hospitals and other institutions.
Microsoft says its immediate priorities are completing service restoration and supporting affected customers. The company also pledged to investigate the root causes of the incident and outline measures to prevent similar failures in the future.
