Local tech expert Arthur Goldstuck said a failure deep inside Microsoft’s servers is likely behind the global outage. The outage left South African businesses and workers unable to use Outlook and other tools on Friday.
The problems started on Thursday evening, South African time. They hit Microsoft’s cloud services, including Outlook, Teams and its Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) assistant.
“So, it’s something at the heart of the Microsoft servers that is failing and continuing to fail,” Goldstuck told East Coast Radio.
Hundreds of local users reported problems as the failure carried on into Friday. When people logged in for work on Friday morning, outage tracking site Downdetector recorded a sharp rise in complaints. Many users also complained on social media.
Goldstuck is a local tech publisher and the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI. He said Microsoft’s services run on powerful servers kept in large data centres around the world.
These servers are meant to give customers steady access to apps such as Outlook and OneDrive. Goldstuck said a failure in the basic server settings could have spread to other linked systems.
“But if the basic settings of the servers at the heart of the system fail and that failure rolls onto all the other systems, then it takes down the entire servers,” he said.
He also asked why backup systems did not take over when the trouble started. “One would expect [for] there to be backups that allow the servers to kick in immediately when it fails in one place and then comes up again in another place,” he said.
Goldstuck said the way Microsoft set up its systems had not allowed for this. He said the systems failed again each time the company tried to bring them back.
Microsoft said features that rely on its Exchange Online cloud service were running slowly. Users could struggle to load inboxes, send or receive emails, or open calendars. The problems affected Outlook on the web, desktop and mobile apps.
Core Teams functions such as video calls, meetings, group chats and channel messages kept working. But Teams features that depend on Outlook and Exchange Online were disrupted. These included booking meetings, sending calendar invites and opening calendars.
Microsoft said Copilot Chat had trouble pulling information from work emails, calendars and files. SharePoint documents stayed available, but some users had problems opening their last used files.
At first, Microsoft blamed high demand on parts of its systems in several regions. It said this was causing connection errors.
The company later said a core process on affected servers was becoming overloaded. This caused the servers to stop responding and cut the capacity available. Microsoft said some servers had also become unavailable without warning.
In an update on Friday morning, Microsoft admitted its fixes were not working as hoped. It said it was looking for other ways to add capacity.
“We’re continuing to pursue all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief,” the company said.
Microsoft said it was not aware of any malicious activity behind the incident. The company said it would share more detail on the cause in a report once the disruption is resolved.
Source: this article is based on reporting by IOL Technology. Image: IOL Technology. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.