The technology company said it was "deeply sorry"
Microsoft has apologised after a major global outage disrupted its services, including Outlook and Teams, for almost 24 hours, affecting businesses, organisations and millions of users worldwide.
The technology company said it was “deeply sorry” for the disruption, which began on Thursday and affected users across more than 70 countries.
Services began recovering by Friday afternoon, although Microsoft warned that full restoration could take longer.
More than 430 million people worldwide use the affected products, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
Microsoft confirmed the problem stemmed from a technical issue introduced during a network capacity upgrade.
It also stressed that the incident was not linked to a cyber attack or artificial intelligence agents.
Users first began reporting difficulties accessing Microsoft 365 services on Thursday, with problems continuing into Friday.
The outage affected several major organisations, including government departments, hospitals, schools and businesses.
In the UK, parts of the NHS, including GP surgeries and hospitals, experienced disruption. Some schools and police forces were also affected.
However, cyber minister Liz Lloyd said the impact on critical frontline services had been “limited”, with emergency 999 calls continuing without disruption.
Elsewhere, the disruption affected organisations across North America, Asia and Europe.
Canada’s national rail network warned passengers they might not receive email updates about their journeys, while hospitals also experienced email problems.
In the United States, staff at the House of Representatives faced an entire day of disrupted legislative work because they relied on Outlook.
India also experienced workplace disruption, with employees struggling to access their usual communication and productivity tools.
Smaller businesses were among those affected, with some reporting that essential operations had been brought to a standstill.
South African winemaker Peter Pentz said his business had been significantly disrupted, with export communications and critical production work affected.
Meanwhile, a homebuyer in Staffordshire faced delays completing her property purchase after waiting eight months for the process to reach its final stage.
Microsoft said engineers had been working to restore services gradually to prevent further instability.
By Friday afternoon, the company reported improvements across North America and Europe, alongside “encouraging recovery signals” in the Asia Pacific region.
However, it did not provide an estimated time for when all services would be fully operational.
The company also promised to publish a full post-incident report after completing its investigation.
Cybersecurity experts warned the incident highlighted how dependent organisations have become on a small number of major technology providers.
Rob Demain, chief executive of cybersecurity firm e2e-assure, described the outage as a “stark reminder” of businesses’ reliance on major technology companies.
Matt Saunders, field chief technology officer at Adaptavist, said organisations needed plans for operating without essential digital tools.
The disruption has raised further questions about digital resilience and how businesses can maintain essential operations when widely used technology platforms experience major failures.
