[US], November 14: A global outage of Microsoft Outlook and Teams was easing on Friday after more than 24 hours of disruption crippled online communications across businesses and governments, though company said it still had no timeline for full recovery of services.
Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab said server issues were behind the incident that also affected its Copilot AI assistant and that a broader rollout of software fixes was stabilizing the system. It said it was not aware of any malicious activity and ruled out AI as the cause, opens new tab.
Outlook and Teams are two of the most widely used workplace applications with hundreds of millions of users. The outage prevented people from performing essential functions such as sending emails, managing calendars and hosting virtual meetings.
It affected government agencies from Australia and Japan to the United States, caused delays at trading firms, hindered some companies from publishing earnings and prompted airlines to warn customers of communication lags, according to public statements.
Organizations that host Microsoft services on their own servers, rather than in the cloud, were somewhat spared.
The outage, reports of which started climbing around 1725 GMT on Thursday according to Ookla, is one of the longest in Microsoft's history and the second disruption to its services this year.
Microsoft said the outage specifically hit features tied to Exchange Online - its cloud-based email and scheduling hub - leaving unconnected applications operational.
The incident deepens questions about the global reliance on a handful of Big Tech companies that supply both the essential software and the cloud infrastructure that underpins it.
It also highlighted the dependence on Microsoft's workplace software, with outage reports spiking as employees began their workdays across Asia and Europe, according to Downdetector's parent company, Ookla.
Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute, more than 1,500 times normal levels.
Microsoft shares closed flat at $523.88 on Friday. The stock has gained roughly 8% so far this year.
Disruptions and financial losses from the outage could result in numerous insurance claims, but the overall hit to insurers is expected to be limited, said Mario De Cicco, vice president of European financial institutions at Morningstar DBRS.
De Cicco estimated global insured losses from the incident at between $300 million and $500 million, well below the $400 million to $1.5 billion financial toll from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage that crashed more than 8 million Windows-based computers and caused widespread disruptions.
Microsoft also faced an outage with its 365 services in January this year and October last year. Last month, it reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform that impacted its suite of productivity software and a range of industries worldwide.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation