Microsoft faces new global outage amidst performance issues

Microsoft 365 services are experiencing significant performance issues once again, just days after a major global outage. Users worldwide are reporting degraded service across Microsoft 365 and Azure platforms. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem, with its 365 Status account on X (formerly Twitter) stating, "We're investigating access issues and degraded performance with multiple Microsoft 365 services and features. Please refer to MO842351 in the admin center for more information."

To address the situation, Microsoft has implemented mitigations and rerouted user requests to minimize the impact. The company is actively monitoring the issue and has advised users to check their status page for updates. An additional update noted, "We're aware of issues with our status page. For more details, see MO842351 in the admin center."

Azure services are also affected, with Microsoft Azure Support posting an update on X, indicating that their teams are investigating the disruptions. "Thank you for your patience. We are actively working to resolve issues impacting Azure Services as soon as possible. Please stay updated on our Status page here: [link]."

The current outage follows a previous global disruption on July 19, which was linked to a problematic update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. That incident, caused by a corrupt update to CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor threat-monitoring software, led to crashes in Microsoft’s Windows operating system, affecting numerous businesses globally.

Today's outage has not been directly attributed to any specific software but has been associated with issues in Microsoft’s network infrastructure. An alert on Microsoft's service status website highlighted problems with Azure access, impacting communication between applications, users, devices, and the internet.

The latest disruption comes after a surge in user reports of issues with Outlook and other applications, as noted on DownDetector.