Microsoft shares fall as global outage hits Outlook and Teams
Microsoft shares dropped nearly 3 per cent in pre-market trading after a major service disruption affected users in more than 70 countries.
Microsoft shares fell approximately 2.8 per cent in pre-market trading on Friday following a global outage that disrupted flagship services including Outlook, Teams, and the AI assistant Copilot, according to Mint.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, prevented businesses, government agencies, and individuals from accessing essential software for over 12 hours. Reports of the outage emerged from more than 70 countries and territories, including the US, Japan, and Australia.
In India, airlines such as Air India, IndiGo, and Akasa Air reported that their email support services were impacted. Financial firms in Taiwan also faced difficulties with trade communications, with one company reportedly using fax to confirm trades.
Microsoft engineers identified infrastructure issues and elevated server loads as likely causes after several servers failed automated health checks. The company stated that the changes implemented to improve availability did not work as expected and that they are identifying alternative measures to increase capacity.
The software giant said it is continuing to investigate the issue and is working to bring affected servers back online. Microsoft also stated it is not aware of any cyberattack or malicious activity behind the disruption.