Microsoft apologises for global outage after nearly 24 hours of disruption

Microsoft confirmed that users in the Americas faced issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes at 17:54 GMT on Thursday, later warning that the disruption likely impacted Microsoft 365 on a global scale. As engineers launched an investigation to restore connectivity, the company reported only a "partial recovery" in certain regions by 04:36 on Friday.

By 13:32, the technology firm noted "broader improvements" across North America, "sustained improvements" throughout much of Europe, and "encouraging recovery signals" within the Asia Pacific region. Microsoft explained that services were being restored gradually to manage the scale of the incident and ensure ongoing stability.

"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners," a Microsoft spokesperson stated. "We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously." The company currently has no "ETA" for full service recovery and intends to publish a comprehensive post-incident report after completing an internal review.

Industry experts noted that the event highlighted the heavy reliance of many organisations on cloud-based services. Rob Demain, chief executive of cybersecurity firm e2e-assure, commented that the outage serves as a "stark reminder of how heavily we rely on a handful of big tech providers."

Matt Saunders, field chief technology officer at tech consultancy Adaptavist, observed that mitigating such issues remains difficult. He explained that while traditional disaster planning suggests using secondary services for resilience, it is "almost impossible for a business to function without tools such as Microsoft." He added that organisations should develop plans for working during future service failures.