Global outage rocks MS Teams users; Microsoft announces investigation
Thousands of users worldwide have been at the receiving end of a Microsoft Teams outage on Thursday morning (July 21). The disruption of the popular business communications platform had users scrambling. Outage tracking website Downtracker.com said that over 4,800 incidents were reported from just the US. Microsoft later came out and confirmed the outages. It also informed that the issue is being investigated.
Why does this story matter?
Microsoft Teams was undoubtedly Microsoft's most popular service during the pandemic-induced WFH period. It has over 270 million users at the moment. Such a large user base means that a simple issue could stop thousands of people from working. And that's exactly what happened today. As outages have become a norm with big tech companies, it is high time that they become more careful.
Multiple Microsoft 365 services with Teams Integration were affected
Several users of MS Teams, an integral business tool, reported outages as they were unable to use the platform. Microsoft later tweeted that the issue was caused by a "recent deployment (that) contained a broken connection to an internal storage device." The issue's downstream effect was felt on multiple Microsoft 365 services with Teams integration, including MS Office, Office Online, and SharePoint Online.
Take a look at Microsoft's confirmation tweet
Over 18,200 incidents were reported from Japan
The exact number of people affected by the outage is yet to be known. According to Downdetector.com, over 4,800 incidents in the US and over 18,200 in Japan were reported. It also said that more than 150 people reported incidents with MS Office 365.
Microsoft later confirmed reports of outage
Microsoft later came out and confirmed that several users were unable to use MS Teams. "We've received reports of users being unable to access Microsoft Teams or leverage any features. We're investigating the issue," said the tech giant. Two-and-a-half hours after the company confirmed outages, it said, "Our telemetry indicates that Microsoft Teams functionality is beginning to recover."
