Redmond/Berlin. According to Microsoft, the serious malfunction in the office programs of the software company Microsoft has been resolved. All systems were running again, the company announced on its website on Saturday morning (CET). The problems affected not only the Outlook email service, but also services from the Microsoft 365 cloud package in general.
With the office communications service Teams, for example, scheduling meetings and calendar connections did not work properly. In addition, the AI assistant Copilot and interfaces to third-party providers were temporarily disrupted, including AI services such as OpenAI and Anthropic. As of Friday afternoon, Microsoft had already gradually made progress in restoring the functions.
The company then emphasized that the disruption was due to a domestic problem and not to a cyberattack or AI activity. There is also no connection to the technical breakdown that has led to thousands of flight cancellations in the USA since late Friday evening (CET). The cause was ultimately due to a previously carried out upgrade of the network capacity. It was said that a problem that was introduced only became apparent after recent network changes.
Many companies, schools and authorities rely on Microsoft for their computer systems in Germany. From the point of view of experts and industry associations, this dependence represents a risk, as has now been shown again. “Anyone who becomes one-sidedly dependent on central digital technologies risks production downtimes and competitive disadvantages in an emergency,” said Ralf Wintergerst, President of the Bitkom industry association.
According to Bitkom, 96 percent of companies in Germany obtain digital technologies and services from abroad. In the event of a complete failure, a clear majority expects impacts on their production and business activities.
Georg Glasze from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) also sees the problem of far-reaching social consequences from just one technical error among major providers. The professor of geography researches digital sovereignty. “The more communication, data storage and work processes are linked together, the more difficult it becomes to replace individual components or switch to other providers,” he says.
From the perspective of IT security expert Christopher Kunz, numerous commercial companies have decided to rely solely on Microsoft for cloud solutions and communications software. “But that is neither confident nor resilient,” said the expert from the specialist magazine “Heise Online”.
The risks for German society and economy are great. "Because we are not only at the mercy of Microsoft's technical expertise, but also at the mercy of the US government. The US government can use sanctions to quickly ensure that individual organizations or even entire states lose access to the Microsoft cloud."
IT security consultant Manuel Atug also calls for the centralization of a few service providers to be urgently broken. He is the founder and spokesman for AG Kritis, an association of independent experts for critical infrastructures. There are enough other providers from Germany or Europe.
The longer an outage lasts, the more difficult the situation becomes for companies, according to the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). There is no evidence of a cyber attack in the recent Microsoft disruption. But regardless of whether technical errors or cyber attacks caused system failures, clear procedures are needed as to how processes can continue to run and companies can remain able to act.
According to the BSI, resilience not only includes warding off dangers, but also preparing alternatives. Alexander Rabe, managing director of the Internet Industry Association Eco, also shares the call to better prepare for emergencies. “For this we need redundant infrastructure, sufficient data center capacity and independent alternative options.”
