Microsoft, one of the world's leading technology companies, faced a major technical outage on Thursday, disrupting Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications for more than five hours. The global disruption affected thousands of users and business organisations, interrupting their regular operations. The outage also impacted connectors used by artificial intelligence (AI) services OpenAI and Anthropic.

According to Downdetector, a platform that monitors online service disruptions, complaints about Outlook peaked at 1,38,058 around 1 pm before declining to approximately 34,490 by the evening. Similarly, complaints related to Microsoft 365 had fallen to around 13,000 by 5:47 pm, while 763 users reported difficulties accessing the Teams application.

Why Did Microsoft Services Face an Outage?

Microsoft clarified that the disruption was not caused by increased traffic but by the unexpected shutdown of several servers under elevated load conditions. According to a company spokesperson, Exchange Online services were primarily affected.

The company launched efforts to redirect traffic through alternative routes and bring the affected servers back online. These measures gradually helped restore services and provided relief to users.

OpenAI and Anthropic Connectors Also Affected

The technical disruption also had a direct impact on business operations. Both OpenAI and Anthropic confirmed that their Microsoft connectors were affected, preventing several tools from functioning properly.

Meanwhile, electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group had to postpone the announcement of its third-quarter financial results due to the disruption. The company was scheduled to announce the results on November 12, but the announcement has now been rescheduled for November 16.

It is worth noting that Microsoft's Azure cloud platform also experienced a technical disruption last month, affecting several industries across the world.