Microsoft apologises as global outage disrupts services for nearly 24 hours

Microsoft has apologised for a widespread service outage affecting products including Outlook and Teams, which caused disruption around the world. The company said it was deeply sorry for the impact.

Services were largely recovering by Friday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the problems began. Microsoft said progress was encouraging but it could not confirm when systems would be fully restored.

The outage affected more than 70 countries, disrupting business operations, government services and personal users. Over 430 million people worldwide use the affected products.

According to Microsoft, the issue stemmed from a technical fault introduced during a network capacity upgrade, and was not linked to any cyberattack or artificial intelligence systems.

Experts described the incident as a clear illustration of how dependent businesses and essential services have become on a small number of major technology providers.

Reports of access problems with Microsoft 365 products first emerged on Thursday. By Friday, the disruption had spread to affect institutions including the Japanese government, the Philippines Supreme Court and Australia's intelligence agency, as well as trains, hospitals and courts across North America.