Portal —
Microsoft (MSFT) announced on Wednesday that it has restored all of its cloud services after a network outage brought down its Azure cloud platform along with services like Teams and Outlook used by millions of people around the world would have.
Azure’s status page showed that services in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa were affected. Only services in China and its platform for governments were not affected.
Late in the morning, Azure said most customers should have seen services resume after a full Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN) restore.
An outage of Azure, which has 15 million enterprise customers and over 500 million active users, according to Microsoft data, could impact multiple services and create a domino effect as almost all of the world’s largest companies use the platform.
Businesses have become increasingly dependent on online platforms after the pandemic prompted more employees to work from home.
Previously, Microsoft said it found that devices on the Microsoft WAN were experiencing a network connectivity issue. This affects connectivity between clients on the internet to Azure, as well as connectivity between services in data centers, it said.
Microsoft later tweeted that it had rolled back a network change it believed caused the problem and was using “additional infrastructure to speed up the recovery process.”
Microsoft didn’t disclose the number of users affected by the disruption, but data from outage tracking website Downdetector showed thousands of incidents across every continent.
The Downdetector site tracks outages by compiling status reports from various sources, including users.
Microsoft’s cloud business had helped support second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. The company forecast third-quarter revenue at its so-called intelligent cloud business of $21.7 billion to $22 billion, despite concerns that the lucrative cloud segment could be hit hard for big tech companies as customers seek to expand their business to cut expenses.
BofA Global Research estimates that Azure’s share of the cloud computing market rose to 30% in 2022, behind Amazon’s AWS.
Microsoft joined other big tech companies in turning to layoffs to weather the weakening economy, announcing last week that it would cut over 10,000 jobs.
Its shares lost 2.4% in premarket trading.
Big tech platform outages are not uncommon, as several companies from Google to Meta have experienced service disruptions. Azure, the second largest provider of cloud services after Amazon, has faced outages over the past year.
We’re investigating an issue where some users are experiencing lag or connection issues when accessing the Exchange Online service. For more information, see EX394347 in the admin center.
– Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 21, 2022
During the outage, users experienced problems exchanging messages, participating in calls, or using features of the Teams application. Many users took to Twitter to share updates about the service disruption, with #MicrosoftTeams trending as a hashtag on the social media site.
Microsoft Teams, used by more than 280 million people worldwide, is an integral part of the daily operations of companies and schools, who use the service to make calls, schedule meetings and organize their workflow.
At large UK-based financial services firms, where multiple messaging apps from vendors such as Movius and Symphony are used alongside Microsoft Teams to connect bankers with clients and office workers with colleagues working remotely, there has been little evidence of significant disruption.
Two London-based sources who work at two major global banks said they hadn’t even noticed a problem.
Deutsche Boerse Group, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, said there had been no impact on trading. Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG (CRZBF) (CBKG) said in a statement that Microsoft is investigating several issues affecting the bank.
Among the other services affected were Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, according to the company’s status page.