Microsoft apologizes for global outage hitting 74 countries

Microsoft experienced a global service outage on November 12, affecting 74 countries and disrupting services including Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft 365. The company apologized on November 13, attributing the issue to technical problems from network capacity upgrades and recent changes. The outage lasted over 24 hours, impacting businesses, government agencies, and healthcare systems. It also affected integrations with AI chatbots ChatGPT and Claude. Microsoft stated the cause was server failures during health checks, leading to overloaded connections, and ruled out cyberattacks. The disruption hit government offices in the US, Australia, and the UK's NHS, as well as financial institutions in Taiwan and Europe. Microsoft has been restoring services in phases and adjusting network settings to prevent recurrence.