Microsoft says 24-hour global 365 outage is over

Microsoft said on Saturday that a global outage of its Microsoft 365 applications, which lasted more than 24 hours, had ended. 'We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,' the company posted on X.

Microsoft 365 applications used by businesses and governments, including Teams and Outlook, were hit, causing communications problems in scores of countries. Copilot was also affected. The company said it was 'not aware' of any outside interference and blamed server issues. The disruption was one of the longest in Microsoft's history and the second this year.

The outage began around 1725 UTC on Thursday, according to web testing and network diagnostics company Ookla. Downdetector, which monitors online outages, logged more than 7.4 million reports of problems worldwide.

Germany was not spared: a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization said the outage did not have a major impact on federal government functions but significantly affected German businesses. Britain's state health service, the NHS, was also severely affected, with personnel forced to use paper records rather than those stored online.

The disruption highlights the widespread reliance of governments and businesses on a very small number of Big Tech companies. The problems at Microsoft are so far believed to be unconnected with a major communications outage that has affected US aviation.