Microsoft restores services after global outage lasting more than 36 hours
Applications including Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 tools are back online following a disruption that began on November 12.
Microsoft has restored its services after a global outage lasted for more than 36 hours, according to News18. The disruption, which started on November 12, affected users in several countries and impacted access to emails, calendars, virtual meetings and cloud-based applications.
The outage centred on Exchange Online, the company's cloud-based email infrastructure. In addition to Outlook and Teams, users reported difficulties accessing SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and other workplace tools.
Microsoft stated that the incident was caused by a technical issue rather than malicious cyber activity or artificial intelligence. The company traced the problem to an issue introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade that appeared after a recent network change.
Initially, Microsoft reported that several servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which put pressure on the remaining infrastructure. Engineering teams worked to redirect traffic and restore server capacity in stages.
The disruption affected businesses, government agencies, schools and other organisations. Some institutions used phone calls and fax to manage communications while facing delays in accessing work-related information.
Microsoft apologised to its customers and partners for the disruption. The company said it has addressed the underlying problem and is monitoring the stability of the restored services.