A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot for tens of thousands of users globally on Friday, with staff at Australian government agencies reporting email failures and the national cyber security coordinator looking into the outage.
Downdetector reports of problems began early Friday morning, with nearly 130,000 users reporting trouble accessing Outlook and other Microsoft services. At one point, reports to the platform reached almost 20,000 per minute, stemming from outages across five Microsoft services in 74 countries. Microsoft said a “core process becoming overwhelmed” had disrupted services.
The outage affected users in multiple regions, including Australia, where staff at Services Australia, Home Affairs, the National Disability Insurance Agency and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water were unable to send or receive emails as of 9am. Public servants told The Canberra Times they had received no information from management about potential workarounds. "I don't know what the workaround is," one staffer said. Another said: "We're at the whim of Microsoft."
Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator, Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, was looking into the outage, a spokesperson for the home affairs minister said.
AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic also reported being affected, with OpenAI saying it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors and Anthropic identifying an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.
Microsoft said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing "elevated load" after a large number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, shifting load onto remaining infrastructure. The company initially said it was "aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact" and restarting affected servers.
By about 9pm UTC Thursday, Microsoft said it had validated an alternative health check method on a subset of servers, allowing them to return to service, and was applying the change more broadly. It was also preparing an automated process to detect and restart unresponsive servers. The company said a review of recent changes had identified configuration updates as potential contributors, but investigations continued.
RMIT associate professor Mark Gregory said the outage appeared to affect the network layer and could be similar to the configuration issue that brought down Optus's network in 2023. "If you lose part of that pool, then all of the users are trying to access the remaining servers, and that overloads them. And then they go down," he said. "And so you end up with a cascading problem."
University of Melbourne associate professor Adel Toosi said the disruption highlighted the risk of growing reliance on a handful of major cloud providers. "If all of them are failing, nothing can be done," he said.
A further update from Microsoft was expected by 9:30am AEDT.
Analysis
Why This Matters
- Millions of users worldwide lost access to core productivity tools, causing significant workflow disruption across businesses and governments.
- The outage exposed vulnerabilities in the concentrated cloud services market, where a single company's failure can cascade globally.
- It raises questions about contingency planning in organisations that rely exclusively on Microsoft's ecosystem.
Background
Microsoft 365 is a widely used suite of cloud-based productivity tools including email (Outlook), messaging (Teams), document editing (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and AI assistant (Copilot). The outage occurred early Friday morning Australian time, affecting users across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. It follows a pattern of major cloud outages from providers including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, though Microsoft's breadth of consumer and enterprise users makes its outages particularly disruptive.
Key Perspectives
Microsoft: The company said it was investigating and working to restore services, pausing deployments and restarting servers. It identified configuration updates as potential contributors but said investigations were continuing.
RMIT's Mark Gregory: The outage likely stemmed from a misconfiguration in the network layer, causing a cascading overload as surviving servers were forced to handle traffic from failed ones.
University of Melbourne's Adel Toosi: The event showed the downside of centralising services around a few major cloud providers, which can create single points of failure.
Australian public servants: Staff reported being uninformed about the outage, unable to access workarounds, and reliant on intermittent or alternative tools.
What to Watch
- Microsoft's next update, due by 9:30am AEDT, on full restoration timeline and root cause.
- Whether the Australian Cyber Security Coordinator issues any public findings or recommendations.
- Potential regulatory or policy responses regarding cloud service resilience and mandatory contingency planning.
Checked
12 claims in this story checked against 5 sources: 11 supported.
Show each claim
- SupportedA global Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot.World news | The Guardian: “Microsoft says its servers are beginning to return to service after a global outage resulted in nearly 130,000 users globally reporting issues accessing its 365 suite of software, including Outlook and Teams. ... AI assistant Copilot was also affected.”
- SupportedNearly 130,000 users reported problems with Outlook and other Microsoft services on Downdetector.Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News: “Nearly 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook and other Microsoft services”
- Partly supportedMicrosoft said a “core process becoming overwhelmed” disrupted services.The Canberra Times - News: “Microsoft revealed at about 9am that a "core process ... becoming overwhelmed" had disrupted Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Copilot.”
- SupportedA public servant said, “I don't know what the workaround is.”The Canberra Times - News: “"I don't know what the workaround is."”
- SupportedDowndetector reports peaked at almost 20,000 per minute across five Microsoft services in 74 countries.Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News: “At one point, reports to the platform reached almost 20,000 per minute, stemming from outages across five Microsoft services in 74 countries.”
- SupportedStaff at four named Australian agencies could not send or receive emails at about 9am.The Canberra Times - News: “Staff at Services Australia, Home Affairs, the National Disability Insurance Agency and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water were not able to send and receive emails.”
- SupportedPublic servants had not received information from management about potential workarounds.The Canberra Times - News: “And they hadn't received updates from their IT teams or management on how to work around the outage.”
- SupportedThe national cyber security coordinator was looking into the outage, according to a spokesperson for the home affairs minister.Latest Science news: “A spokesperson for the home affairs minister said the national cyber security coordinator, Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, was aware of the outage and was looking into it.”
- SupportedOpenAI and Anthropic reported effects involving Microsoft connectors.Just In: “AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic confirmed they've been affected by the widespread Microsoft outage. ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors because tools were not working as expected. Anthropic said it had identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.”
- SupportedMicrosoft said servers became unexpectedly unavailable, shifting load onto the remaining infrastructure.World news | The Guardian: ““We’ve determined that the elevated load isn’t driven by an overall increase in traffic, but by a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, which is shifting load onto the remaining infrastructure.””
- SupportedMark Gregory said losing part of the server pool could overload the remaining servers and create a cascading problem.World news | The Guardian: ““If you lose part of that pool, then all of the users are trying to access the remaining servers, and that overloads them. And then they go down. “And so you end up with a cascading problem.””
- SupportedAdel Toosi said, “If all of them are failing, nothing can be done.”Latest Science news: “"If all of them are failing, nothing can be done," he said.”