Global outage: Microsoft blames network change for service disruption

…Apologises to customers By Juliet Umeh The US-based technology, Microsoft, has blamed a recent network change for a global outage that disrupted its workplace services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot. While apologising to its customers in a statement, the company said the incident stemmed from an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a subsequent network change.

The statement reads: “The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change.” The outage affected customers and partners in different regions, disrupting access to Microsoft services. The company said it had addressed the underlying issue and was continuing to restore services to remaining customers and regions.

“We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services,” it said, adding that the disruption was “not related to cyber or AI/agents.” Microsoft said services were restored gradually because of the scale of demand. “Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.

“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” it said. Microsoft added that it would release a full post-incident report after completing its review of the outage. The disruption affected organisations that rely on Microsoft’s workplace tools, with reports of interruptions to services in sectors including healthcare, aviation, policing and education.