Microsoft has managed to restore the operation of its main digital platforms after a worldwide outage that has affected companies, public administrations and users across more than 70 countries. The incident caused widespread failures in Outlook, Teams and in its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, according to what the Bloomberg agency has advanced.
The technology company has confirmed that all its tools are available again and that the emails that were held back during the outage have already been processed. "All products are operational," it said in a statement cited by the same agency, in which it also specifies that the incident is considered closed.
The first hypotheses place the origin of the fault in an update to network capacity, and Microsoft has denied that it has any relation to a cyberattack or to the use of artificial intelligence. In the recovery tasks, more than 1,000 engineers and employees intervened, under the coordination of the teams responsible for cloud services and the Microsoft 365 suite.
Preliminary investigations point to a problem in Exchange, whose operation consumed server resources rapidly until leaving them inactive. Among the factors analyzed was a possible incorrect configuration in the Azure network. The scope of the outage has affected multiple economic and professional sectors.
According to Bloomberg, the first warnings of problems began around 1:00 p.m. on Thursday on the U.S. East Coast. From there, reports surged on Downdetector, the platform that monitors in real time the status of web pages, applications and digital services, where hundreds of thousands of user complaints were recorded.
The incident has represented a setback for Microsoft, whose M365 package has more than 450 million corporate users. However, the market reaction was limited and the price of its shares showed hardly any significant changes.
In this context, analysts consulted by Bloomberg consider that the disruption will not substantially alter, at least in the short term, the group’s competitive position, given the high cost and the difficulty of replacing its solutions. However, they have noted that the episode could encourage some clients to explore alternatives such as Google Workspace or Anthropic’s new productivity proposals.
From the company they have expressed their regret for the consequences of the fall and have committed to review in detail what happened in order to minimize the risk that it repeats. "We know that our customers depend on our services to carry out important tasks every day, and we regret the impact these interruptions have had on those who trust us," said the person responsible for the Microsoft 365 package, Charles Lamanna, after learning of the incident.