Microsoft outage disrupts global work, Vancouver workers take early lunch

A Microsoft outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot disrupted work globally on Thursday, forcing users like Vancouver engineer Madison Smith to take early lunches and slow down. The issue, now broadly restored, was caused by a network capacity upgrade, not a cyberattack. The outage impacted Microsoft 365 services for an unknown number of users, with the company citing over 450 million paid subscriptions. Businesses like Check Point Software shifted to WhatsApp and Slack, while some workers used phone calls to contact clients, as email delivery failed. Experts like Steve Giguere highlighted the need for redundancy in applications, noting over-reliance on core providers. Some workers found a silver lining, with offices becoming more conversational as people stepped away from screens.