Microsoft reported this Saturday (14) that services for Outlook, Teams, Copilot and its other products have been fully restored, ending a global outage that paralyzed online communications for companies and governments for more than 30 hours.
"We have completed our efforts to resolve the issue underlying the incident and have restored service to customers and regions that were still affected," the company published on X.
Microsoft had stated that server problems had caused the crash and that it was not aware of any malicious activity, ruling out AI as the cause.
Outlook and Teams are two of the most used work apps, with hundreds of millions of users. The outage prevented people from carrying out essential functions, such as sending emails, managing calendars and holding virtual meetings.
According to public statements, the problem affected government agencies from Australia and Japan to the United States, caused delays at trading companies, prevented some companies from publishing results and led airlines to warn customers about delays in communications.
However, big tech reported that there was no indication that the problems it faced were responsible for the interruption of flights in the USA, which lasted more than four hours this Friday and impacted more than 10 thousand flights.
In Brazil, the CNJ (National Council of Justice) suspended procedural deadlines due to the failure at Microsoft. Federal regional courts (TRFs) were affected, according to Folha's findings.
Brazilian companies and government agencies had to concentrate communication via WhatsApp on Friday, as Microsoft's email service only began to be reestablished late in the morning. In Japan, companies even resorted to using fax, while the NHS (United Kingdom's National Health Service) asked employees to manually reschedule appointments using paper and pen.
Organizations that host Microsoft services on their own servers rather than using the cloud have been relatively spared.
The outage, reports of which began to increase around 2:25 pm on Thursday (Brasília time), according to Ookla, is one of the longest in Microsoft's history and the second failure in its services this year.
Microsoft said the outage specifically targeted resources linked to Exchange Online — its cloud-based email and scheduling platform — while unconnected applications continued to function.
The incident raises questions about global dependence on a small group of technology giants that provide both critical software and the cloud infrastructure that supports it.
It also highlighted the dependence on Microsoft work software, with a sharp increase in reports of failures as employees began their workdays in Asia and Europe, according to Ookla, Downdetector's parent company.
The website, which receives complaints from users about website and service failures, recorded more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, with a peak of almost 20,000 per minute, more than 1,500 times above normal levels.
“This shows how much of the workday now depends on email and collaboration tools from a single vendor,” commented Luke Kehoe, principal industry analyst at Ookla.
Despite the technical issue, Microsoft shares closed flat at $523.88 on Friday. The shares are up around 8% this year.
Disruptions and financial losses from the failure could result in numerous claims, but the overall impact on insurers is expected to be limited, said Mario De Cicco, vice president of European financial institutions at Morningstar DBRS.
It estimated global insurance-covered losses from the incident at between $300 million and $500 million, well below the $400 million to $1.5 billion financial impact caused by the CrowdStrike outage in 2024, which took down more than 8 million Windows computers and caused widespread disruption.
Microsoft also faced an outage in its 365 services in January this year and October last year. Last month, it reported a flaw in its Azure cloud platform that affected its productivity software suite and several industries around the world.
"The biggest concern is that this is not the first Microsoft 365 outage this year," said Josh Gilbert, market analyst at trading platform eToro.
"If unreliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it will give all IT departments a reason to think twice about putting even more of their business in the hands of a single vendor."
Still, some analysts question whether incidents of this type could lead customers to migrate to competitors, given the high costs of replacing tools so deeply embedded in daily operations.
A UK government spokesperson said the country was working with Microsoft to find a solution to the outage, which has hit organizations including the NHS and London's Metropolitan Police.
The lack of access to email and other services was affecting the Metropolitan Police's ability to record some crimes online, although its ability to respond to calls was not hampered.
The NHS said its local services were turning to alternative measures, such as using other IT systems or using paper records.
For companies, the consequences were widespread. European exchange operator Euronext reported email problems, British insurer Aviva activated contingency systems for its earnings calls, and Danish shipping giant Maersk warned customers about delays in updates.
US artificial intelligence giants OpenAI and Anthropic also faced problems with Microsoft connectors, which were later resolved, while Indian airlines IndiGo INGL.NS, Akasa Air and Air India said their email support services were affected.
The disruption also disrupted fund management at Taiwan's securities brokerages, life insurers and investment fund companies. One of the companies even canceled a bond buyback operation, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Another Taiwanese financial firm turned to fax to confirm trades, a second source said.
In the United States, electric truck maker Workhorse Group on Thursday rescheduled the release of its results to November 16, while Switzerland's Richemont briefly postponed the announcement of first-half results on Friday.
