Microsoft works to restore services after a major outage affects Outlook and Teams
On Monday, people using Microsoft’s productivity suite, such as Outlook and Teams, encountered severe downtime caused by a massive Microsoft outage. The problems, which started in the morning, affected Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft Store, as well. At the end of the day, the company said that most of the services had been restored while some small glitches were observed to be still affecting a few users.
Timeline of Events
The initial reports of the Microsoft outage began at approximately 5 a.m. ET when users reported access issues with Microsoft 365 services to Downdetector. Soon after, the Microsoft 365 Status account on X (previously known as Twitter) reported that people were unable to sign in to Exchange Online and some Microsoft Teams features like calendar.
The company’s response was that the disruption had been caused by a “recent change” in their surroundings. At 9 AM ET, Microsoft released the fix and recovery processes started being implemented across the systems that were impacted by the attacks. But then the progress was not as fast as it was expected and there were some delays later in the morning.
At 3:At 30 p.m. ET, more measures were reported to have been taken, and recovery was in progress. After 6 p.m. ET, the number of complaints reduces, this shows that the solution worked. Later that night, Microsoft said most of its services were back online including Teams, Outlook and other core applications. The company remained vigilant in order to confirm complete recovery from the storm.
Impact on Users
The Microsoft outage interfered with the workday of millions of users all over the world. Many people complained and joked about the interruptions on social media platforms such as X. One user said: “@Microsoft: outages to my planned productive work day. Phone calls and handwriting may yet help to bring order out of the chaos. One said, “Microsoft, can you please correct this Outlook problem now?” A girl has deadlines before the holidays!
In spite of this, Microsoft admitted that there were still problems with Outlook on the Web for a small number of users. The company also observed that mail queuing had been delayed and said it was already looking into such remaining issues.
Topics with Frequent Trouble and Background
This Microsoft outage comes after other disruptions that were reported early this year. In September, thousands of users faced the same problems in Skype, SharePoint, and OneDrive applications. In that instance Microsoft blamed the difficulty in a third party ISP managed environment that was causing a number of connectivity problems.
Another incident occurred earlier this year, a CrowdStrike update affected millions of Microsoft computers, including banks, airlines, healthcare providers, etc. Delta Air Lines, which was one of the most affected organizations, confirmed that it had to cancel as many as 7,000 of its flights. These repeated outages are indicative of the problems that Microsoft has to deal with when it comes to providing uninterrupted service to its clients across the world.
Moving Forward
Microsoft said late Monday night that all but one of its services had been restored, a problem that affected some users using Outlook on the web. Regarding these outstanding problems the company assured to address them as soon as possible. However, the quick response to the Microsoft outage shows that this company will do all in its power to prevent disruptions to its users.
This is especially important as businesses and persons depend on cloud services in performing their activities or daily tasks. How well Microsoft will cope with these outages in the future will determine the trust of its users.
source:: msn.com
