Microsoft says services restored after global outage affects governments

Microsoft has stated that its services are now fully operational following a massive outage that caused widespread disruption for governments, businesses, and public services globally. On Saturday morning, the technology firm confirmed it had restored service to the remaining customers impacted by what is being described as one of the worst IT failures in recent years.

The US-based company noted on its Microsoft 365 status page: “We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions.” The firm added: “Further updates can be found at MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.”

The disruption, which began on Thursday, affected courts, governments, airlines, banks, healthcare services, and businesses. Authorities in Japan, Singapore, and Australia reported that the episode, lasting several hours, impacted some of their operations. In the UK, where NHS England maintains a five-year contract to utilise Microsoft 365, essential public services were disrupted, forcing hospital staff to use paper records, while one union stated that ambulance services suffered a “serious impact”.

The already backlogged British court system also faced difficulties, with some juries sent home early or prisoners not transported to court. At Minshull Street crown court in Manchester, staff were forced to search for a fax machine. In the US, school districts instructed parents to use phone calls or online apps to reach their child’s school, while staff at the House of Representatives informed Politico that they had lost a day of work. A detention centre in Colorado reported an inability to accept online bond payments for detainee releases, requiring people to post bond in person at the jail.

In Australia, many users of Microsoft 365 reported being unable to access their inboxes, including those at schools, councils, and courts. The federal police and Asio, the national domestic security and intelligence agency, were also impacted. Mike Burgess, the director general of Asio, stated that the agency’s systems “operate on multiple levels,” adding that they had been affected “on one level, yes, but not completely”.

Across Europe, government agencies in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands reported complications, with one French municipality advising citizens to use the telephone rather than email. In Japan, government email services became unavailable, leading staff to use text messaging. The shipping company Sagawa Express was unable to accept certain online reservations, while the pharmaceutical firm Taisho reported that it had to manage orders by phone.

Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air confirmed their email support services were affected. Meanwhile, Taiwanese life insurers, security firms, and investment trust companies reported to Reuters that fund management services had been disrupted. Users reported that Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Outlook, and the AI assistant Copilot, were interrupted. Downdetector, an online tracker, indicated it received reports from users in more than 70 countries and territories.

Microsoft stated on its website that roughly 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps. The issues began at approximately midday on Thursday in the US and at 6pm in the UK. The Washington-based company apologised on Friday for the disruptions and clarified that the outage was “not related to cyber” or artificial intelligence agents. It stated that the incident “was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced” after a recent network change.

These disruptions demonstrate the cascading problems that arise when multiple technology and communications platforms rely on the same provider. The outage has prompted concerns in the UK regarding an overreliance on a small number of technology companies. Steven Murdoch, a professor of security engineering at University College London, told the Guardian that an outage of this scale is typically “the result of some surprising interaction between systems. Each of the systems is normally quite well understood but interactions between them are complex and frequently the cause of large outages like this. It’s very hard to build a complex system without there being some risk of some failure.”

Tim Clement-Jones, a former chair of the House of Lords artificial intelligence select committee, described the widespread outages of essential government services as an “I-told-you-so moment” that highlights Britain’s dependence on US technology. Jeremy Singer, a professor at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, stated: “This problem serves to emphasise the dependence we have built on one company’s digital infrastructure, and may lead us to question whether we need more resilience in our IT ecosystem.” While the exact number of people affected remains unclear, Microsoft noted in January that it had more than 450m paid commercial subscriptions to its 365 services.