Innovation News

Microsoft outage affects millions of users globally

Eliza Sayon Jan 27, 2023

2 min read

Millions of Microsoft users across the world were greatly affected when the tech giant was hit by an outage that took down its digital services.

Multiple reports reveal that Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure was down in North and South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa this Wednesday. However, it was also found that China and its government platforms were not affected by the outage.

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Aside from Microsoft Azure, the company’s Teams were also down on Wednesday, further affecting users across the world who are only using the two platforms.

Users of Microsoft Teams faced issues with exchanging messages, join calls or use any features of the application. Meanwhile, other services such as Microsoft Outlook, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business were also affected.

According to Microsoft, the outage was caused by a network connectivity issue that was occurring with devices across the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN). The outage of Microsoft Azure had impacted a variety of services, creating a domino effect on all of its users.

Microsoft states that not only had the outage had impacted the connectivity between clients to Azure, but it also affected the connectivity between services in data centres.

Since then, the tech giant was able to enact a roll back a network change that it believed was causing the issue.

“We’re monitoring the service as the rollback takes effect,” it said.

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While the company did not disclose the number of users affected by the disruption, but data from outage tracking website Downdetector showed thousands of incidents distributed across the globe.

While Azure’s current outage is not uncommon, the increased dependence on digital platforms due to more employees working from home was a key factor in the severance of the service disruption.

With AAP

Eliza Sayon

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Eliza is a content producer and editor at Public Spectrum. She is an experienced writer on topics related to the government and to the public, as well as stories that uplift and improve the community.