Microsoft restores global services following widespread IT outage

NEW DELHI — Microsoft announced on Saturday morning that its services have been fully restored globally following a major IT failure that disrupted governments, businesses, and public infrastructure across multiple continents.

The US-based technology firm stated on its Microsoft 365 status page that it had completed efforts to resolve the underlying issue affecting remaining customers and regions. The widespread disruption began around midday on Thursday in the US and 6pm in the UK, impacting core Microsoft 365 services such as Outlook, Teams, and the Copilot AI assistant.

Online tracker Downdetector recorded outage reports from users across more than 70 countries and territories within an hour of the disruption. The incident affected operations for international governments including Japan, Singapore, and Australia.

In the UK, vital public services experienced significant delays. Hospital staff were forced to rely on paper records, while courtrooms scrambled to locate fax machines. Airlines, banks, courts, and healthcare networks worldwide were also caught in the hours-long episode. Microsoft 365 applications serve a massive user base, with the company noting on its website that more than 430 million people use the apps, alongside more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions recorded in January.

On Friday, Microsoft issued an apology for the widespread disruptions. The Washington-based company clarified that the incident was unrelated to cyberattacks or artificial intelligence agents, explaining instead that the failure stemmed from a network capacity upgrade issue triggered by a recent network change.

The global outage has renewed scrutiny regarding the heavy reliance of critical infrastructure on a small cohort of major technology providers. Tim Clement-Jones, a former chair of the House of Lords artificial intelligence select committee, described the failure as an “I told you so moment” that underscores Britain’s vulnerability to US technology dependence.

Similarly, Jeremy Singer, a professor at the University of Glasgow’s school of computing science, noted that the incident highlights digital infrastructure reliance on a single corporate entity. He suggested the event may prompt broader questions about the need for enhanced resilience within the wider IT ecosystem.