Microsoft Services Restored After 36 Hours... 7.4 Million Outage Reports Worldwide

Microsoft's global outage affecting its business services was resolved after 36 hours.

According to major foreign media outlets, Microsoft said its services, including Teams and Outlook, had returned fully to normal at around 6 a.m. GMT on Nov. 14.

Microsoft said in a post on the X account of its Microsoft 365 online productivity platform, "We have completed the steps to address the root cause of this incident and restored service for the remaining customers and regions that were affected."

Earlier, widespread outages hit Microsoft's email and office software, causing major disruption worldwide. Government agencies and companies also experienced difficulties with email and calendar management.

Reports of the outage began to surge at around 5:25 p.m. GMT on Nov. 12. According to global outage-tracking website Downdetector, reports from more than 70 countries worldwide topped 7.4 million, peaking at about 20,000 per minute, more than 1,500 times the usual level.

This was the second such service outage this year and one of the longest disruptions in Microsoft's history.

Microsoft previously said server issues caused the incident. It said the outage mainly affected features related to Exchange Online, its cloud-based email and calendar management service.

Microsoft said it had found no evidence of an external cyberattack.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) and the Metropolitan Police in London were among those affected, while Euronext, the operator of European securities exchanges, experienced email disruptions. In Taiwan, the fund management operations of securities firms, insurers and investment trust companies were affected. 

In the United States, electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed its earnings announcement, scheduled for Nov. 12, to Nov. 16. Swiss luxury goods company Richemont also delayed its first-half results announcement, which had been scheduled for Nov. 13.

Mario Di Cico, vice president covering European financial institutions at global credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS, estimated worldwide insured losses from the incident at $300 million to $500 million (approximately KRW 400 billion to KRW 670 billion).

Microsoft has also experienced Microsoft 365 service outages in January and October last year. Last month, an outage at its core cloud platform, Azure, affected productivity software and various industries around the world.

According to Bloomberg, Jason Ader, an analyst at global investment bank William Blair & Company, said, "Over the long term, some customers may become more receptive to Google Workspace and emerging productivity solutions from Anthropic."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.