Global outage: Microsoft blames network upgrade

Global software giant Microsoft has pinned down disruptions to its services worldwide to a technical limitation from an earlier network capacity upgrade, not cyberattacks.

The technology company said the hitch has nothing to do with artificial intelligence (AI) agents, following a breakdown that affected its services and users across different regions.

The clarification comes amid difficulties Microsoft users faced accessing core packages including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot, which raised global concerns on Friday.

In an X statement on Friday, Microsoft said the issue emerged after a recent network change exposed a problem associated with an earlier network capacity upgrade.

“This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change,” the tech giant said.

Microsoft said it has addressed the underlying issue and is now stepping up efforts to restore services to the remaining affected customers and regions.

The company explained that it adopted a gradual restoration process because of the scale of demand, validating service stability at each stage.

Microsoft also reported improvements in service availability and email delivery performance across a growing portion of the affected infrastructure, which it said is approaching normal.

“We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure,” the company said.

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Apologising to customers and partners, Microsoft acknowledged the disruption caused by the incident and the reliance organisations place on its services for their daily operations.

“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously,” it remarked.

The company said its teams are reviewing the incident and will publish a full post-incident report when the investigation is over.