Microsoft links global Outlook, Teams outage to server failures
KATHMANDU: Microsoft has attributed a major global outage affecting Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services to server failures within its infrastructure.
The disruption, which began on November 12, prevented users in multiple countries from accessing email, calendars, online meetings and other workplace applications. Outlook, Teams and Microsoft's Copilot artificial intelligence assistant were among the services affected.
Microsoft said a large number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, shifting workloads onto the remaining infrastructure and causing connectivity problems across its cloud services, according to Reuters news report.
The company said the outage was not caused by unusually high traffic and that it had found no evidence of malicious activity behind the incident.
Microsoft engineers worked to restart affected servers and restore services while reviewing recent configuration changes identified as a potential cause of the disruption. The company also paused further deployments as part of its investigation.
The outage affected businesses, government agencies and other organisations worldwide, underscoring the dependence of many institutions on Microsoft's cloud-based communication and collaboration platforms.
Microsoft later reported progress in restoring services, although some users continued to experience intermittent access issues and delayed email delivery as recovery efforts continued.
