Microsoft experienced a widespread outage impacting its Azure cloud platform and Microsoft 365 services on Monday, just ahead of the company’s highly anticipated quarterly earnings report. The disruption affected users across multiple regions, with many reporting issues accessing Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.
The outage began in the early afternoon and quickly spread, prompting frustration from business users and IT administrators who rely on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. According to the company’s status dashboard, engineers identified “network configuration issues” as the likely cause and began implementing mitigation steps within hours.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for Microsoft, which is expected to highlight its cloud and AI growth in its upcoming financial results. Analysts note that even temporary downtime could raise questions about reliability and service resilience in an increasingly competitive cloud market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
By evening, most services had been restored, but some customers continued to experience slower performance. Microsoft has promised a full investigation and pledged to strengthen safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
