Microsoft Email Services Approach Normal Levels After London Outage

Microsoft email services are approaching normal levels after an outage disrupted online services for major public bodies and millions of other users in London, The Standard reported.

The outage began on Thursday early evening. Around 6.15pm on Thursday, tracking platform Downdetector registered a surge of UK users logging difficulties with Microsoft Teams.

Services disrupted by the fault included Teams, Outlook and Microsoft 365. The Met Police, London Fire Brigade, Houses of Parliament and the Supreme Court were affected by the issue, alongside schools, NHS trusts and businesses across the capital.

“A Microsoft exec posted on social media. It is not cyber. It’s not malicious. It’s simply they’ve overloaded these servers,” said Bob O’Donnell, founder of TECHnalysis Research, told the BBC.

We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue. We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.

— Post by @clamanna on X

Overloaded servers cause global disruption

Microsoft confirmed a cyber-attack was not behind the outage. The tech giant stated the cause was “elevated load”, which meant servers experienced higher-than-normal stress that triggered an outage as some servers became overloaded and others unavailable.

“I’ve been affected for over eight hours here in the U.S. I know folks in India and Asia have been affected. I obviously I know folks in Europe have also been affected. I barely got the Zoom link to be able to join you this morning,” O’Donnell told the BBC.

Overnight UK time, Microsoft managed to get servers operating multiple times, but those servers crashed. The tech giant later stated services were “being gradually restored”, with users seeing some email services beginning to return.

“We’re looking across Government at the moment as to the impact of Microsoft services as one of the key providers, not just for Government services but industry services. We recognise that the outage has potential to cause a lot of trouble,” said Luke Pollard, Defence Minister, to Times Radio.

Global impact on transport and government

Government computer experts assessed the impact of the Microsoft outage on Whitehall. India’s biggest airline, IndiGo, stated the outage impacted its email support services, while Malaysia Airlines confirmed it experienced email disruptions affecting customer feedback services.

Other airlines did not weigh in on the outage. Flights from major London airports managed without disruption.

Emirates used the outage as a marketing opportunity. The Emirati airline wrote on X: “Your email might be down, but the skies are always open.”

London received the largest number of disruption reports in the UK. Heat maps from Downdetector suggested the capital was one of the hardest-hit areas, alongside Manchester and Leeds.

Microsoft tries to mitigate problems through infrastructure changes

The company explained it pursued multiple remedies to ease the difficulties, which involved sectioning off segments of its network architecture and redirecting data flow along alternative pathways. The company reported that the changes were “not taking as expected”.

“Current status: We’re continuing to monitor activity across regions to evaluate server status and determine actions that can be taken to improve capacity. This includes reviewing server performance and confirming that developed patches have been applied and working as intended after infrastructure reboots are completed,” Microsoft said.

The tech giant added that it observed marginal success while working to expand capacity through the utilisation of Virtual Machines.

Charles Lamanna, executive vice president at Microsoft, wrote on X: “We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue.”

“We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity,” Lamanna told X.

More on this story: Microsoft Outlook Outage Stretches Past 20 Hours, Experts Say · Microsoft Says No Sign of Cyber Attack as Outlook Access Is Restored

More on Microsoft: Microsoft Outage Prompts Cybersecurity Expert to Urge Data Backups · Microsoft Outage Disrupts ChatGPT and Claude Integrations · Microsoft Outage Forces Japanese Offices to Use Fax and Phone