A major outage has occurred in Microsoft's cloud service “Microsoft 365,” causing problems including failures to send email around the world. The cause is believed to be failed health checks on multiple servers, and concerns have been raised that the impact may spread to Japan by the morning of the 13th Japan time.
Microsoft of the US announced on the 12th that a major outage was occurring in its enterprise cloud service “Microsoft 365.” The affected services include Outlook, Teams, Copilot and SharePoint, and Microsoft said the impact could spread to users around the world. Recovery work is under way, but no outlook for a full recovery has been provided.
The outage was explained as having been caused by failed health checks on multiple servers, rendering them unavailable and concentrating the load on other servers. No physical failures have been reported at this point, and the affected servers are being restarted and communications rerouted to restore service. Microsoft Japan explained that no facts suggesting a cyberattack had been confirmed.
In the United States, the impact has spread to government agencies, universities and other organisations, with reports that some operations have stopped, including disruptions to email and calendar functions in Congress. Reports of Outlook problems in the United States reached nearly 130,000 at the peak. Reports of problems in Japan are expected to increase from the early morning, raising concerns about the impact on corporate activity.
Regarding the Japanese government's response, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Ozaki Masanao (尾崎 正直) disclosed that the government had confirmed disruptions affecting the government-wide core network infrastructure. The article is expected to be updated with details on the scope of the outage and the response.