IT Home, November 13 — According to Bloomberg’s late-night report today (the 13th), progress has been made in restoring Microsoft’s primary software services. The widespread outage had paralyzed government agencies, financial traders, and business operations across multiple regions globally.
At approximately 9:00 AM Eastern Time on the 13th (IT Home note: corresponding to 22:00 Beijing Time), Microsoft's announcement confirmed that service conditions have improved, with a significant reduction in email backlog, nearing normal levels. However, errors may still occur in more than 20 products and services.
As of local time this morning, users have experienced ongoing issues with meeting invitations failing to deliver and unresponsive web pages for the second consecutive day. Microsoft’s previous service outages rarely lasted more than a few hours.
Since the outage occurred at approximately 12 p.m. local time, Microsoft has issued hourly updates on repair progress, including steps such as diagnosing system failures and redirecting user traffic to other servers. Although there were several signs of recovery during this period, the service status quickly deteriorated again.
The cause of the failure has not yet been determined. Microsoft stated that a core process on some servers stopped responding entirely due to excessive load, and initial troubleshooting and repair efforts were hindered by ongoing errors from the servers.
After the outage is resolved, Microsoft will provide further details; there is no evidence suggesting that this incident involved malicious activity.
The Microsoft outage also forced some companies to delay their earnings releases, with Swiss luxury group Richemont and U.S. truck and bus manufacturer Workhorse Group among those affected.
PVH, the apparel group that owns brands such as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, has announced a restructuring plan to cut approximately 4% of its global workforce. An anonymous informed source said the company had scheduled “difficult conversations” with some employees in Asia for 13:00 local time on the 13th, but these discussions were postponed due to a Microsoft outage, leaving employees uncertain about whether they will retain their positions.
The outage monitoring site Downdetector received hundreds of thousands of outage reports from Microsoft users in over 70 countries. In addition to email and chat services, cybersecurity software, file sharing services, and system management tools were also affected.
In the UK, insiders revealed that Microsoft’s outage disrupted communications at healthcare facilities, causing the National Health Service to postpone some medical appointments. Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London notified patients that email services were temporarily unavailable, but medical services continued as scheduled. Several local police departments also reported being unable to receive crime reports online.
Traders in Singapore, securities brokers in India, and government officials in Tokyo also experienced Microsoft service outages. Euronext issued a notice informing users of an interruption in their email communication services.
Japan's Ministry of Finance said it was unable to receive emails for most of the day. Due to the email system failure, government agencies had to resort to posting paper notices to inform journalists of their daily schedules.
The Reserve Bank of Australia was also affected, with multiple departments unable to access Outlook, but critical operations continued normally. New Zealand’s immigration department suspended all visa application processing.