Microsoft Outages Hit Multiple Platforms

Facts

• On Wednesday morning, users around the world reported outages of various Microsoft online services including the Teams communication platform and Outlook email system. Microsoft quickly worked to resolve the issue.
• Microsoft attributed the outage to updates made to its “Wide Area Network” which the company claims have been “resolved.” Downdetector, a website outage tracker, showed diminishing reports of problems.
• Microsoft said it has recovered its cloud services following the network outage that derailed its cloud platform Azure. Azure has over 500M users; its services were impacted in nearly every region except for China.
• Problems associated with the outages included difficulties exchanging messages and joining calls. Many users took to social media to report the service disruptions as the hashtag #MicrosoftTeams trended.
• The outages did not significantly impact financial services firms in the UK as some high-ranking banking officials did not notice the problem. Deutsche Boerse Group added that the incident had no impact on trading.
• Microsoft is also in the midst of economic uncertainty as it laid off 10K workers last month — roughly 5% of its workforce. On Tuesday, the company reported a 2% increase in sales over the past three months with overall profits falling by 12%.

Sources: Associated Press, BBC News, CNN, and Reuters.

Narratives

• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Brunel. An over-reliance on a small number of cloud service providers like Microsoft’s Azure opens up companies, particularly financial services firms, to immense risks. It's clear that even tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon are not immune from glitches, and companies that use them must find ways to be less reliant on big tech platforms.
• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Microsoft. Microsoft is working daily to improve user experience and mitigate risks associated with online platforms. This is why Microsoft is collaborating with numerous firms to create more integrated cloud experiences with better security and governance. This allows for issues to be resolved quickly and promotes a seamless customer experience.