By Joyce Ekeh
Microsoft has blamed a network configuration change for a global outage that disrupted access to its major workplace services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, affecting businesses and organisations across different regions.
The US-based technology giant, while apologising to affected customers and partners, said the disruption originated from an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade, which resurfaced following a subsequent network change.
In a press statement, the company explained that the technical fault affected the availability of its services, leaving users unable to access some of the platforms they rely on for communication, collaboration and daily operations.
“The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change,” Microsoft said.
The outage affected customers and partners in multiple regions, triggering disruptions across organisations that depend on Microsoft’s workplace applications for business operations and service delivery.
Among the affected platforms were Outlook, Microsoft’s email service; Teams, its workplace communication and collaboration tool; and Copilot, its artificial intelligence-powered assistant.
Microsoft said it had addressed the underlying technical problem and was working to restore services to customers and regions that were still experiencing disruptions.
Providing an update on the recovery process, the company said: “We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services.”
It also dismissed suggestions that the incident was linked to a cybersecurity breach or artificial intelligence-related activities.
The company clarified that the disruption was “not related to cyber or AI/agents.”
Explaining why the restoration process took time, Microsoft said it adopted a gradual recovery approach to prevent a recurrence of the disruption and ensure that its systems could handle renewed traffic.
“Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration,” the statement added.
The technology company expressed regret over the impact of the incident on businesses and individual users, acknowledging the disruption caused to customers and partners.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” it said.
Microsoft further promised to publish a comprehensive post-incident report after completing its investigation into the outage.
The disruption highlighted the growing dependence of businesses and public institutions on cloud-based productivity platforms, with interruptions to Microsoft’s services reportedly affecting organisations in critical sectors, including healthcare, aviation, policing and education.
The incident also renewed concerns about the vulnerability of essential workplace operations to technical failures involving major technology infrastructure providers.
Microsoft said its review would provide further details about the cause of the outage and the measures being taken to prevent a similar incident in the future.
