Microsoft said its major software services were improving after an outage that disrupted organizations across more than 70 countries, though more than 20 products and services could still experience errors.
According to IT Home’s November 13 report, citing Bloomberg, Microsoft said at around 9 a.m. New York time on November 13 that its email backlog had fallen substantially and was approaching normal levels. Users were still reporting undelivered meeting invitations and unresponsive web pages for a second consecutive day.
The disruption began on the afternoon of November 12, local time. Microsoft reported investigating system failures and shifting user traffic to other servers, but periods of improvement were followed by renewed problems. The cause had not been established. Microsoft said a core process on some servers stopped responding under excessive load, while continuing server errors hampered initial repairs. It said it would provide more detail after the incident ended and that there was no evidence of malicious activity.
Downdetector received hundreds of thousands of reports from Microsoft users in more than 70 countries. The reported effects extended beyond email and chat to cybersecurity software, file-sharing services and system-management tools.
The outage also disrupted work in healthcare, government and finance. In the UK, a source said communication problems forced the National Health Service to postpone some appointments. London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals told patients email was temporarily unavailable but appointments were proceeding as planned. Several local police forces said they could not receive crime reports online.
Japan’s finance ministry said it could not receive email for much of the day, and government departments used paper notices to share daily schedules with reporters. The Reserve Bank of Australia said several departments could not use Outlook, while critical operations continued. New Zealand’s immigration department suspended processing all visa applications. Traders in Singapore, securities brokers in India and officials in Tokyo also encountered problems, while Euronext notified users of an email disruption.
Richemont and Workhorse Group were among the companies that delayed earnings releases. Separately, PVH announced a restructuring that would cut about 4% of its global workforce. An unnamed person familiar with the matter said the outage prevented the company from holding some planned conversations with employees in Asia on the morning of November 13, leaving those employees uncertain about their jobs.