Microsoft outage disrupts global email, Teams, and AI services
A cascading software issue knocked down core Microsoft products including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot for a day. The incident highlights persistent reliability challenges in the company's global cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft experienced a day-long global outage beginning Thursday that disrupted critical business tools across its ecosystem. The failure initially affected services in the U.S. and the Americas before spreading worldwide as engineers struggled to recover downed servers. The cascading software issue knocked down Outlook email, Teams video conferencing, and cloud services for both consumer and business files. Additionally, the outage impacted Copilot AI tools, Defender security screening, and Intune dashboards, while some users faced difficulties accessing cloud-based Windows computers.
Microsoft stated that a large number of servers were unexpectedly unavailable and confirmed there was no evidence of malicious activity. By Friday morning on the U.S. East Coast, Outlook service had begun to recover. This incident follows a major September outage that was attributed to a core authentication configuration issue. The disruption underscores the operational risks associated with the company's reliance on centralized cloud infrastructure for essential productivity and security functions.