Microsoft Cloud Outage Affects Users Worldwide

Jan 25 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) It said on Wednesday that the networking outage had restored all of its cloud services, including its cloud platform Azure and services like Teams and Outlook used by millions around the world.

It’s Asura status page Services are affected in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Only its platform for services and governments in China was not affected.

Azure said earlier in the morning that most customers should have seen services resume after Microsoft’s wide area network (WAN) was fully restored.

According to Microsoft data, an outage of Azure, which has 15 million corporate customers and more than 500 million active users, could affect many services and create a domino effect for almost all of the world’s largest companies. to use platform.

Businesses are increasingly relying on online platforms after the pandemic forced more employees to work from home.

Previously, Microsoft said it had determined that the network connectivity issue was occurring on devices across the WAN. It said it affects connectivity to Azure between customers on the Internet and connectivity between services in data centers.

Microsoft later tweeted that it had rolled back the network change it believed was causing the problem and was deploying “additional infrastructure to speed up the recovery process.”

Microsoft did not disclose the number of users affected by the outages, but data from Downdetector’s outage tracking website showed thousands of incidents across continents.

The Downdetector platform aggregates status reports from various sources, including users, to track downtime.

Microsoft’s cloud business helped boost its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. It forecast third-quarter revenue of $21.7 billion to $22 billion in its so-called intelligent cloud business, despite concerns that the lucrative cloud segment for big tech companies could be hit hard as customers look to cut costs.

BofA Global Research estimates that Azure’s cloud computing market share will rise to 30% by 2022, overtaking Amazon’s AWS.

Microsoft joined other major tech companies in announcing 10,000 job cuts last week to ride out the weak economy.

Its shares fell 3.2% to $234.41.

Outages of Big Tech platforms are not uncommon, as are many companies from Google (GOOGL.O) For Meta (META.O) Service disruptions were observed. Azure is the second largest cloud service provider after Amazon (AMZN.O)Last year faced outages.

During the outage, users experienced problems exchanging messages, joining calls, or using any features of the Groups app. Many users took to Twitter to share updates on the service disruption, with #MicrosoftTeams trending as a hashtag on the social media site.

Microsoft Teams, used by more than 280 million people worldwide, is an integral part of daily operations for businesses and schools that use the service to make calls, schedule meetings and organize their workflows.

Some signs of significant disruption were seen at large UK-based financial services firms, where multiple messaging apps from providers such as Movius and Symphony are being used in conjunction with Microsoft Teams to connect bankers with clients and office-based staff working remotely.

Two London-based sources who work at two major global banks said they had not noticed a single problem.

Deutsche Boerse Group, which runs the Frankfurt stock exchange, said there was no impact on trading. Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG (CBKG.DE) Microsoft said in a statement that it is investigating several issues affecting the bank.

Other affected services include Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, according to the company’s status page.

“I think there needs to be a bigger discussion about comms and cloud space and redundancy in critical applications,” said Brad Levy, Symphony’s chief executive.

Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bangalore and Subanta Mukherjee in Stockholm, additional reporting by Sinead Cruz in London; Written by Charlie Devereux, edited by Elaine Hartcastle

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