Microsoft restores Teams, Outlook and other services after 24-hour global outage

Microsoft confirmed on Saturday that its Teams, Outlook and other cloud services have been fully restored after a global outage that disrupted online communications for businesses and governments for over 24 hours. The company said it had addressed the underlying server issue and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions in a post on X.

The outage affected Exchange Online features, preventing users from sending email, managing calendars and hosting virtual meetings. Government agencies in Australia, Japan and the United States, as well as trading firms, corporations preparing earnings releases and airlines, reported delays and communication problems. Organizations that host Microsoft services on private servers experienced fewer disruptions.

Downdetector, owned by Ookla, recorded more than 7.4 million outage reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 reports per minute – about 1,500 times the normal level. "It shows how much of the working day now runs through one provider's email and collaboration tools," said Luke Kehoe, lead industry analyst at Ookla.

Microsoft's shares closed flat at $523.88 on Friday, up roughly eight percent year-to-date. Mario De Cicco, vice-president of European financial institutions at Morningstar DBRS, estimated insured losses from the incident between $300 million and $500 million, far lower than the $400 million to $1.5 billion losses from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage.

Analysts noted that this is the second major Microsoft 365 disruption this year, following outages in January and October, and warned that repeated reliability issues could cause some enterprises to reconsider heavy reliance on a single provider. "If reliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it gives IT departments a reason to think twice before putting even more of their business in one provider's hands," said Josh Gilbert, market analyst at eToro.