Microsoft Office 365, Azure Cloud Disrupted by Service Issues

By Aaron Tilley 

Microsoft Corp. on Monday suffered disruptions with its Office 365 workplace software tools and its Azure cloud that disabled some users for hours.

Microsoft said problems included some users of its Outlook email services and Teams workplace collaboration suite that provides chat functionality and videoconferencing and has seen rapid growth during the pandemic. Users trying to log into the systems were unable to connect, though those already logged in weren't affected, the company said on its website.

The company initially said it had identified the Office 365 problem it linked to a recent change to the software, and restored an earlier version. That fix, however, failed to restore normal service, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said. About two hours later the company said it was seeing improvements after putting in place mitigation steps.

Service outages like this aren't unusual. Software providers sometimes encounter glitches when they roll out new versions that can take hours or longer to fix. Alphabet Inc.'s Google last week suffered a disruption with some of its tools, including email and cloud-based word processing.

Users of Microsoft's Azure, the company's massive cloud-computing system that many businesses rely on to store and analyze data, on Monday suffered similar problems as those affecting the Office 365 suite.

"We're working to resolve a service interruption impacting a subset of customers performing authentication operations," a company spokesman said.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 28, 2020 22:09 ET (02:09 GMT)

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