Microsoft Outage Hits Global Businesses; Services Restored

A global Microsoft 365 outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other workplace services across several countries, including India, for more than 24 hours. Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air reported email support disruptions, while Air India rerouted emails to maintain customer communication.

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Microsoft traced the disruption to server infrastructure issues associated with a network change during a capacity upgrade. The company ruled out cyber activity and confirmed on November 14 that affected services had fully recovered.

Indian Airlines Report Email Support Disruptions

In India, the outage affected customer communication channels of major airlines, including IndiGo and Akasa Air.

IndiGo issued an advisory informing passengers that its email support services were affected and that some customer emails might not reach the airline. It advised passengers to use its website, mobile app and other available support channels for urgent assistance.

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Akasa Air also reported delays in email support and directed passengers to its 24-hour customer care centre.

Air India, however, said its flight operations and customer support channels remained unaffected. The airline temporarily rerouted its emails to ensure that customer messages continued reaching its teams.

The disruption also affected financial services firms and businesses that depend on Microsoft’s workplace applications for daily communication and operations.

What Caused the Microsoft Outage?

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The disruption originated in Microsoft’s Exchange Online infrastructure, which supports email and calendar services across Microsoft 365.

Microsoft reported that several servers had unexpectedly become unavailable, creating additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure. This affected mailbox access, email delivery and services connected to Exchange Online.

The impact extended beyond Outlook to several Microsoft applications and features, including:

• Microsoft Teams: Calendar, meeting scheduling and certain connected functions.
• Microsoft Copilot: Access to Copilot Chat and organisational data.
• SharePoint Online: Selected features dependent on Exchange Online.
• Microsoft Planner and To Do: Problems accessing plans and completing operations.
• Microsoft 365 administration: Disruptions to selected management and security functions.

Microsoft said it had found no evidence of malicious or cyber activity behind the incident. Its recovery efforts included restarting affected servers, redistributing traffic, applying configuration changes and increasing infrastructure capacity.

Microsoft Confirms Full Service Restoration

After working on recovery measures for more than a day, Microsoft confirmed on November 14 that services affected by the global outage had fully recovered.

The company had earlier reported gradual improvements in server stability and email delivery, although some users continued experiencing intermittent connectivity problems and delayed messages.

The incident has renewed concerns about organisations’ dependence on a limited number of cloud service providers for critical business operations.

For employers, it also highlights the importance of business continuity plans, alternative communication channels and backup arrangements to ensure that essential employee and customer services can continue during major technology disruptions.