Microsoft 365 outage continues into second day as shares fall

Microsoft shares were down about 6.4 per cent at US$516 as of 8:15 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, before the trading session began, as a global outage for Microsoft web services continued into a second day.

The outage

Microsoft said the outage was affecting a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings that interact with its Exchange Online and email services. Users reported that Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were down.

The company said it was trying different ways to identify the cause of the problem and get its servers back online, using "a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure." Microsoft said it did not have any indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity and would treat the incident "with urgency and priority until full resolution."

On Friday, Microsoft said it was seeing "encouraging" progress in its push to restore service across various platforms. In more recent updates, the company said "we’re seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue."

Global impact

The outage caused issues at hospitals, Via Rail, and elsewhere on Thursday. Around the world:

• Air India said its flight operations were unaffected but it temporarily rerouted its email services.
• IndiGo said disruptions to its email support services affected its ability to receive customer queries, while other support channels remained operational and flight operations were unaffected.
• Singapore's Government Technology Agency said government emails were down and it was working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.
• The Philippines' Supreme Court said the outage affected some of its operations, including email responses.
• Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage impacted the government's IT infrastructure and that authorities were "keeping a close eye on the developments."
• The British government said it was "working closely" with Microsoft and that "robust contingency plans" were in place. British police forces said they were unable to receive crime reports online and urged people to call emergency responders for urgent reports.

Markets

Futures for the S&P 500 climbed 0.2 per cent on Friday, while those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 per cent. Nasdaq futures were up slightly.

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Sources

• globalnews.ca: Microsoft shares pressured on Friday as traders weigh outage’s impact - National | Globalnews.ca
• bnnbloomberg.ca: Microsoft outage drags on: Key updates here
• ctvnews.ca: Microsoft outage drags on: Key updates here

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.