Microsoft restores Outlook, Teams and Copilot after global outage
Microsoft confirmed that its cloud services are fully operational following a worldwide outage that affected millions of users across more than 70 countries.
Microsoft said its cloud services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, have been fully restored after a global outage that began on Thursday and lasted nearly 24 hours. The company attributed the disruption to a "network capacity upgrade" and ruled out a cyber-attack or artificial-intelligence cause.
The outage impacted an estimated 430 million users, affecting businesses, government agencies and individual consumers in regions ranging from Japan and the Philippines to the United Kingdom and North America. In the UK, parts of the NHS, schools and police forces experienced limited effects, while the Canadian rail network and hospitals reported email delays. In the United States, staff from the House of Representatives said a full day of legislative work was lost.
Microsoft announced a phased recovery, reporting partial restoration by early Friday morning and broader improvements across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific by mid-day. A spokesperson said, "> We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously." The company plans to publish a post-incident report after completing its review.
Cybersecurity experts noted the event highlights the reliance on a small number of large cloud providers. Rob Demain, chief executive of e2e-assure, said the outage serves as "a stark reminder of how heavily we rely on a handful of big tech providers" and emphasized the difficulty of maintaining business continuity without such services.