Microsoft outage affects businesses, government agencies and AI platforms: Full list of services impacted
A widespread Microsoft outage that began on Thursday, November 12, continued into Friday, November 13, disrupting several services across the US, India, Australia, Japan and other countries. The impact included customers being unable to access Microsoft’s email, workplace applications, cloud services and AI applications.
Microsoft acknowledged the incident and said an unexpected loss of server availability had put additional pressure on its remaining infrastructure. The outages were not limited to Outlook or Microsoft Teams; they also affected security, enterprise management, and third-party applications reliant on Microsoft’s cloud services, according to the company’s service health advisories. During the outage, Downdetector logged over 130,000 reports of Outlook issues.
Full list of Microsoft services affected by the outage
According to Microsoft’s service health updates, several products experienced disruptions across different categories.
Third-party websites and organisations affected
The outage also impacted organisations that depend on Microsoft’s infrastructure.
OpenAI reported problems with new Microsoft connector connections and certain tools. Anthropic found another upstream provider problem with its Microsoft 365 connector.
The school administration platform, School Bytes, used by schools in New South Wales, was disrupted in Australia. Government departments, including Australia’s federal police and intelligence agencies, also reported email issues.
The US House of Representatives confirmed it was affected and stated thatengineers were working with Microsoft. Meanwhile, electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed its third-quarter financial results announcement from November 12 to November 16, citing business disruption caused by the outage.
What caused the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft said it was caused by a significant number of servers suddenly going down. Additionally, some servers were restored and then started receiving traffic, causing some to become unresponsive and adding strain to the other infrastructure, the company said.
Microsoft engineers began reviewing diagnostic data and traffic management data, and rebuilt compromised servers using earlier software configurations. Microsoft was not convinced it was a cyber attack, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said. However, the precise technical cause had not been established.
When will Microsoft services be fully restored?
Microsoft has begun service recovery, but progress has been uneven as of Friday, November 13. As traffic returned to some of those revived servers, they began to slow down once more, the company said.
Microsoft was trying to restore infrastructure capacity and progressively reconnect impacted users. It warned services may take time to return to normal as applications re-established their connections.
