Microsoft Teams collaboration software suffered a global outage this morning, with thousands of users around the world unable to access the service. Widespread problems have also been reported with the company’s Outlook email platform. Microsoft says it is investigating and has put the problem down to a networking configuration issue.
The problems were first reported by Teams users in India, and now appear to have affected Europe too. According to the Downdetector website, which monitors internet service availability, more than 5,000 users in the UK alone have reported problems with Teams.
What has caused the Microsoft Teams outage?
In a Twitter thread, Microsoft said it was experiencing problems with “multiple services” that form its Office 365 suite of products. “We’ve isolated the problem to networking configuration issues, and we’re analysing the best mitigation strategy to address these without causing additional impact,” the company tweeted.
We’re investigating issues impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services. More info can be found in the admin center under MO502273.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 25, 2023
Its most recent update, posted at 9.26am, says: “We’ve rolled back a network change that we believe is causing impact. We’re monitoring the service as the rollback takes effect.”
Microsoft’s Xbox Live gaming service is also thought to have been impacted by the problem, while the company said it is looking into a “connectivity issue” with its cloud computing platform Azure, which is impacting what it described as a “subset of users”.
Teams outages can be costly for businesses
While outages of Teams and other cloud services provided by Microsoft and its rival hyperscale public cloud platforms such as Amazon’s AWS and Google Cloud are rare, when they do happen the impact is significant for businesses which have come to rely on these products.
The last major Microsoft Teams outage happened in July, and saw the service and other Office 365 products go offline for several users. The company said at the time that the problem occurred because “ a recent deployment contained a broken connection to an internal storage service, which has resulted in impact”.
Earlier this month, another part of the company’s infrastructure came under strain when cloud storage service OneDrive and video calling platform Skype suffered sweeping outages. Microsoft said these problems were caused by changes being made to the apps.
Read more: Microsoft faces EU antitrust probe over Office 365
