Microsoft's Outlook, Teams and Copilot are still down
Disruption hits governments, airlines and financial markets around the world; Microsoft reports signs of stabilization.
Quick Look
- Microsoft's Outlook, Teams and Copilot suffered a severe global outage for more than 12 hours, affecting governments, companies and airlines in several countries.
- Microsoft attributed the problem to server failures and implemented fixes.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
This is the second outage to hit Microsoft 365 services this year, following previous incidents in January and October last year.
Outlook, Teams and Copilot, from Microsoft, remained offline this Friday (13), when one of the company's worst failures lasted more than 12 hours, damaging communications around the world.
Microsoft attributed the outage to server problems and said it was not aware of any malicious activity. In its latest update today, the company reported that it is seeing signs of stabilization after implementing fixes more broadly to achieve a sustainable resumption of services.
The interruption affected government bodies in Australia, Japan and the United States, in addition to causing disruption to brokerages, delays in the release of results by companies and leading airlines to alert their customers about delays in communications.
In Europe, stock trader Euronext said its listing teams were facing email communication problems, while British insurer Aviva said it was putting contingency plans in place for its earnings conference calls. Danish shipping company Maersk has warned customers about delays in emails and updates.
US artificial intelligence (AI) companies OpenAI and Anthropic said they faced issues with Microsoft connectors, while Indian airlines IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India said their email support services were affected.
The disruption also affected fund management at Taiwan's securities brokerages, life insurance companies and investment fund companies. One of the companies even canceled a bond buyback operation, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Another Taiwanese financier has resorted to using faxes to confirm trades, a second source said.
In the United States (US), electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed the release of its results until November 16, while Swiss company Richemont briefly postponed the announcement of its first half results.
This is the second outage to hit Microsoft 365 services this year.
Josh Gilbert, market analyst at trading platform eToro, said investors will likely deal with the disruption for now as few customers may abandon Microsoft's ecosystem overnight.
“The biggest concern is that this is not the first 365 outage this year, and if reliability starts to look like a recurring issue, it will give all IT departments a reason to think twice about putting even more of their business in the hands of a single provider,” he said.
Microsoft faced an outage in its 365 services in January this year and also in October last year. Last month, the company reported an outage in its Azure cloud platform that affected the productivity software suite and several industries across the world.
What to Watch
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Workhorse Group to release delayed financial results.
Very likely · Within days
Open Questions
- What was the exact root cause of the server issues?
- How many companies and users were affected globally?
