Microsoft services down globally due to networking outage

Several Microsoft services, including Teams, Xbox Live, Outlook and 365 suite, are inaccessible to millions of users around the globe due to a networking outage that took down its cloud platform Azure and services such as Teams and Outlook,

Reuters reports Azure’s status page showed services were impacted in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Only services in China and its platform for governments were not hit.

However, Microsoft is aware of this glitch in their system and has acknowledged that the outage is being worked on.

“We’ve determined the network connectivity issue is occurring with devices across the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN),” Microsoft said. It said this impacts connectivity between clients on the internet to Azure and connectivity between services in data centres.

Microsoft’s status page for Office 365 says;

Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.

The company’s feedback was that apart from the services reported by users, other of its services, like SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Graph, were also affected by the outages.

The page reassured by saying;

We’ve identified a potential networking issue and are reviewing telemetry to determine the next troubleshooting steps.

A popular tool that tracks service reliability, DownDetector, reported that the glitch in the system was detected when users reported their inaccessibility issues with multiple services, including 365, Outlook, Teams, Minecraft, Azure, GitHub and Store, about an hour ago after it happened.

The company did not disclose the number of users affected by the disruption.

Microsoft is not the first big tech to suffer services outage

Microsoft’s current outage is not the first to affect a big tech in the past year. In August 2022, Alphabet Inc’s Google services suffered a brief global disruption, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. At the outage’s peak, more than 30,000 user reports had indicated issues with Google in the United States alone.

In October, Downdetector reported that over 68,000 users reported problems with the popular messaging app owned by Meta, WhatsApp, in the United Kingdom. Problems were reported by 19,000 people in Singapore and 15,000 people in South Africa, as well.

Azure, the second largest cloud services provider after Amazon faced outages last year.

Read also: Microsoft could acquire majority stake in OpenAI, integrate ChatGPT into its products

More problems for Microsoft amid layoffs

Last week, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees in response to the reduction of costs during uncertain revenue times.

The platform explained that the layoffs were necessary as “we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic; we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.”

Before the layoff of the 10,000 employees, Nadella, the Chief Executive Officer, in an email memo sent to employees, wrote;

We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.

He added that “hard choices” are historically being made in the company to remain relevant in the industry and that it is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts.

Decisions such as layoffs are part of a core procedure of any organization. It allows the company to reevaluate its values, re-dictate transactional guidelines and, most importantly, keep the organization abreast of changes required to help it achieve its goals.

However, it is common for several problems to arise after a mass layoff at a big tech firm that will keep users guessing if the decision-makers have made a mistake. A most recent example is the user reactions to Twitter glitches following the termination of employee contracts after Elon Musk took over at the microblogging platform.

Read also: A chat with Microsoft’s Adora Nwodo on career, content and teaching