Microsoft has apologised to customers and partners following a major global service disruption that affected several of its services, including Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Copilot. The technology giant clarified that the outage was caused by a technical issue during a network capacity upgrade and was not the result of a cyberattack or artificial intelligence (AI) agents.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, November 12, affected users across multiple regions, leaving thousands unable to access emails, workplace applications and other Microsoft 365 services. Businesses, government departments, educational institutions and several organisations also reported problems as the outage continued into Friday.
Microsoft said the technical issue triggered infrastructure problems, putting additional pressure on its network and affecting the availability of several connected services. The company ruled out malicious or cyber activity as the cause of the disruption, amid speculation on social media about a possible cyberattack and the involvement of AI agents.
In response to the disruption, Microsoft engineers worked to identify the underlying issue, stabilise affected infrastructure and restore services. The company adopted a gradual recovery approach, bringing services back online in phases to ensure network stability and prevent further disruptions.
Microsoft also acknowledged that its initial recovery efforts did not deliver the expected results, requiring additional measures to improve server performance and increase capacity. The company subsequently reported improvements in service stability as it continued implementing corrective measures.
Apologising for the inconvenience caused, Microsoft said it regretted the disruption experienced by its customers and partners. The company also assured users that its teams were working to restore normal operations and address the remaining issues.
Microsoft is expected to publish a detailed incident report outlining the technical failure, the sequence of events that led to the outage and the corrective measures taken to prevent similar disruptions in the future.
The incident has once again raised concerns about the dependence of businesses and public institutions on large cloud service providers, highlighting how technical problems within a single technology ecosystem can disrupt essential digital services across multiple sectors.