Microsoft warned users that disruptions to its services could last for days, even though the tech giant said early signs of stabilisation appeared after a global outage started on Thursday, Nov. 12.
More than 14 hours after the disruption began, Microsoft said recovery was “gradually taking shape” with service capacity improving across several workloads, but that “our systems are not yet operating at normal levels so businesses and individuals may still experience delays and interruptions in email services”.
In its latest service update today, Microsoft said it had increased the timeout period for emails to 48 hours “to help preserve delayed messages while we work to resolve the incident”. The idea is that emails affected by the disruption should not be lost while the company tries to get normal service back.
A longer timeout also means some users will have to wait longer than usual for certain messages to arrive. Businesses who use Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Online every day could therefore continue to struggle until the recovery process is complete.
X: “Early stabilisation and capacity improvements are already happening as recovery actions continue. To help preserve delayed mail during this event, we’ve extended email timeout to 48 hours” Microsoft also directed administrators to the Microsoft 365 admin centre where a full update is available under incident number MO1550821. Users and organisations can monitor progress of the recovery on Microsoft’s official service status page or admin centre.
Even with these early improvements, Microsoft has cautioned that service conditions are variable. In another update, the company said: “recovery actions were ongoing across our systems, and some incremental improvement was seen in several workloads, but capacity had not yet returned to baseline levels; network and traffic-management actions remained active as engineers stabilised the affected infrastructure”. So some users might get back to services sooner than others, while other applications and functions could continue to have intermittent problems.
Microsoft’s cloud-based services and applications were disrupted, which has made life difficult for organisations that use Microsoft 365 for communication and workplace operations. Outlook and Exchange Online users have been concerned about delayed email delivery and access to mailboxes; businesses using Microsoft collaboration and productivity tools may also be affected (depending on the workload interrupted and how quickly recovery is taking place).
The company hasn’t said all services are back to normal, but users have been told to follow official service updates rather than assume temporary improvements mean complete resolution.
The length of the outage has also raised questions about whether it was caused by a cyberattack. Microsoft said in its updates that malicious activity wasn’t behind the incident (information provided therein).
Senior technology reporter Chris Vallance also pointed out that Microsoft had said there was nothing malicious behind it: “They’ve always said there’s no malice here,” he said. “Large-scale tech outages affecting multiple services have typically been internal technical failures.”
“When you look back at previous outages like this affecting a lot of different services, it’s hard to think of one that was not cyberattacked,” Vallance said. Most were because something went wrong internally rather than maliciously, he said; there was no reason currently to doubt Microsoft’s explanation either. The company has ruled out a cyberattack, but the technical cause of the disruption remains part of its investigation and recovery process.
Microsoft’s warning comes as companies, employees and individual users wait for normal operations to resume. Email delays can slow down regular business communication, customer support, internal coordination, and time-sensitive transactions; organisations with heavy cloud usage may need alternate channels while disruption lasts. Users should check Microsoft’s official service health updates for information about their accounts and organisations.
For now, Microsoft’s focus is on restoring service capacity and stabilising the workloads impacted. The company has reported some early signs of improvement, but its 48-hour email timeout extension suggests that delays may still be ahead. This incident is another reminder of just how much businesses and individuals rely on cloud infrastructure and how disruptions to a major technology provider can impact everyday digital operations around the world.
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