New Delhi .The sudden technical disruption in Microsoft services used for digital work across the world affected thousands of companies, government institutions and common users. Important services like Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams were disrupted for about nine to ten hours. During this period, many users were unable to open their email accounts, while some people had trouble sending and receiving messages. Online meetings and other business work were also affected.
This problem came to light in different parts of the world including India. The effect of this technical glitch that started in America on Thursday continued till Friday. Users also had trouble accessing services like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneDrive with Microsoft 365. The company's AI assistant Copilot was also affected. Connectors to Microsoft 365 into some AI services from OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected.
At the peak of the outage, more than a million users in the US reported problems with Outlook and other services. In different countries too, a large number of people reported email inbox not loading, login problems and connectivity disruptions. This also affected those companies and government offices where there is more dependence on these digital platforms for everyday work.
The exact cause of the technical problem was initially unclear. During the investigation, the company cited low server availability and increasing pressure on a portion of its infrastructure as a possible reason for the connectivity issues. Many servers became unexpectedly unavailable after failing automated health checks. Due to this, the pressure of data and user requests increased on the remaining active servers.
The company clarified that the problem was not caused by increased Internet traffic in general, but by some servers being unavailable, putting additional pressure on the rest of the system. Efforts were made to reactivate the affected servers and redirect traffic. However, some servers were becoming unresponsive again when they received traffic again, slowing down the process of normalizing services.
Such interruptions in cloud servers do not occur for just one reason. Sometimes a wrong change in the configuration of the server can affect the entire network. When applying settings to a large number of servers simultaneously, incorrect addresses, numbers, or conflicts in security rules may disrupt the operation of services.
Software updates can also pose risks to cloud services. Testing a new feature or patch may be successful in a limited environment, but in real conditions, when used simultaneously by millions of users, hidden technical flaws may be revealed. In such a situation, the functionality of the server or network may be affected due to the update.
Another important reason is the malfunction of the digital identity and login system. Systems like Microsoft Entra ID allow users to use Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and other applications through a single login. If this system slows down or fails to accept digital tokens, access to many related services may be disrupted simultaneously.
Power supply failure in the data center can also cause server shutdown. These centers rely on battery backup and diesel generators along with the main power grid. If the power transfer switch or backup system fails, power to the server may be cut off.
Apart from this, network routing problem can also become a big obstacle. Border Gateway Protocol i.e. BGP plays an important role in sending data to the right network on the Internet. If its routing information is incorrect, the data may go on the wrong path and users may not be able to reach the concerned server.
This incident has once again shown how much a technical glitch can affect operations amid increasing dependence on digital services. In a cloud system, it is very important to have strong server availability, update checking, network security and alternative systems.