Millions remain affected as the Microsoft outage stretches beyond 18 hours, disrupting global financial markets and airlines. Traders got back on phones to manage deals as email systems failed. Microsoft said it is seeing "marginal success" patching servers, but users still struggle to connect to many essential 365 services.
Key events
The Microsoft outage is causing a headache for financial traders – at at time when the crisis at Nvidia is already causing jitters in the markets.
Bloomberg reports that some portfolio managers have been unable to check emails, making it hard to access trading platforms that require email authentication.
It’s also proving harder to get confirmation that trades have been carried out, forcing traders to use some “old-school” methods.
Eugene Koh, sales trader at CMC Markets Singapore, says:
double quotation mark“Everyone was back on the phone, and our WhatsApp chats were busier than usual.
“Something that normally takes a second on email might now take a phone call and a few minutes to get through.”
More here.
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Microsoft: seeing 'marginal success' patching servers
This is Graeme Wearden in the UK, taking over from Achol Arok.
Microsoft has just pushed out a small update to its service status page, saying it is seeing ’marginal success’ from its efforts to fix the problem.
It says:
double quotation markCurrent status: We’re continuing to monitor activity across regions to evaluate server status and determine actions that can be taken to improve capacity. This includes reviewing server performance and confirming that developed patches have been applied and working as intended after infrastructure reboots are completed.
At this point, we have observed marginal success. In parallel, we’re taking action to expand capacity through the utilization of Virtual Machines.
But the upshot, as Europe wakes up, is that users may still be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services…
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Updated at 02.11 EST
Tech giants and international airlines say they’ve been hit by outage
US AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic said they had faced issues with Microsoft connectors, while Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air said their email support services were impacted.
The outage also disrupted fund management at Taiwanese securities firms, life insurers, and investment trust companies. One of the companies went as far as cancelling a bond repurchase agreement transaction it had already scheduled, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, declining to provide the name of the company.
Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro, said investors would likely look past the outage but that repeated disruptions could hurt Microsoft over time.
double quotation markI think investors will take this in their stride for now, because very few of these customers can realistically walk away from the Microsoft ecosystem overnight.
The bigger worry is that this isn’t the first 365 outage this year, and if reliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it hands every IT department a reason to think twice before putting even more of their business in one provider’s hands.
The market will want to see Microsoft prove it can keep the lights on before it asks customers to spend more on Copilot.
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Updated at 01.52 EST
Microsoft’s global outage will cost Australia billions, expert says
The Microsoft outage is being described as a disaster for the Australian business sector, with costs running into the billions of dollars.
The financial impact had already been massive in the 12 hours the systems had been down, a privacy and security expert said. The cost to Australia would be billions of dollars, said Ashwin Pal, of the risk advisory firm RSM Australia:
double quotation markThat’s not just direct, but indirect costs as well.
But a protracted event like this can easily be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for smaller entities.
Pal said his clients had activated business continuity and disaster recovery plans, but many businesses didn’t have a fallback.
double quotation markThey’re just at a standstill – if you don’t actually have a plan B, then you’ve got a problem.
Pal said that Microsoft was obviously struggling to recover, which raised bigger questions.
double quotation markI’m a technologist and I’m actually flabbergasted as to how something like this could have happened ... they pushed out a change which should have been tested.
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Updated at 01.59 EST
Computer society calls for review of Australia’s reliance on single providers
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has renewed calls for the federal government to review which critical IT systems rely on a single provider and where backup options could keep the economy running.
The organisation also accused the government of failing to effectively communicate updates to the public.
Chief executive Dr Prins Ralston said:
double quotation markWho in Australia was accountable for keeping them informed? And who will answer for the lost productivity and the cost to the Australian economy?
Ralston said the outage “exposed Australia’s reliance on foreign technology”, particularly on small businesses.
double quotation markCustomers may be able to claim service credits under their cloud contracts. Those credits won’t make up for a lost morning of trade for a small business.
Australians who couldn’t get paid, couldn’t send an invoice, or couldn’t reach a government service this morning are entitled to be worried. ASIO and the AFP had workarounds. Most small businesses and many agencies don’t. Resilience shouldn’t depend on whether you happen to have a second system.
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Updated at 01.22 EST
Saffron Howden
Australian economic impact unknown
The assistant treasurer, Daniel Mulino, said he could not quantify the impact the outage was having on the Australian economy.
Speaking on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, he said:
double quotation markWhat I could say is, I think, like everybody, I appreciate a bit of downtime from my email occasionally but, obviously, would rather it not happen from a global downturn.
Look, this is a global issue, and it reinforces to us how important the digital side of our economy is and how interconnected everything is.
Obviously, the quicker this gets up, the lower the disruption will be.
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Updated at 01.00 EST
Yu-chen Li
Microsoft outage disrupts Taiwanese businesses
Microsoft’s global outage has disrupted businesses in Taiwan, with more than a hundred reports of service disruptions recorded from the island between 3am and 9am on Friday, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector.
Office workers said they were unable to send or receive emails through Outlook, while others reported problems with Teams’ calendar and scheduling functions.
The Friday disruption has prompted jokes on social media, with some office workers suggesting they might as well call it a day and go home early to enjoy the weekend.
“Dear Microsoft, please don’t rush to fix Outlook. And while you’re at it, could you take Teams down for maintenance too? Sincerely, an exhausted Taiwanese worker,” wrote one user on social media platform Threads.
The post garnered more than 18,000 likes within a few hours, after some of the features including messaging have gradually returned to normal on Teams.
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Updated at 00.29 EST
Josh Taylor
Microsoft working ‘with urgency’ to end outage
The latest update from Microsoft has arrived, and there’s still no sign the outage will end soon.
The company said its latest fix is still experiencing issues with traffic surges, and Microsoft is still trying to pinpoint the underlying cause.
Microsoft said:
double quotation markCurrent actions we are taking include scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce load. Additionally, we’re querying for machines in a bad state to perform a force sync for our recent network change, which may improve service availability.
However, we are encountering issues with the machines being stuck in a bad state, preventing our changes from syncing as expected. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of changes applied so we can determine what refinements are necessary.
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Updated at 00.16 EST
Microsoft rules out cyber-attack as cause of outage
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna has confirmed the outage was not caused by a cybersecurity breach.
In a post on social media, Lamanna said:
double quotation markWe regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue.
We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.