Outlook down: Microsoft reports 'limited recovery'; Kiwis share impact on health services, house settlements, courts, car regos

Microsoft is “aggressively” working on fixing an issue that has taken much of its software down worldwide.

The outage is affecting Microsoft 365, including cloud-based services like Outlook and Copilot.

According to Downdetector, users worldwide began reporting problems with the company’s software at 6.30am New Zealand time.

It appears much of New Zealand’s systems are affected.

“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact. We’ve paused all deployments, we’re moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we’re restarting affected servers to return them to service,” Microsoft said in its latest update on X.

The Herald has had intermittent success loading Microsoft’s service health status website.

The official website said the company is investigating an issue impacting Microsoft 365 services and that it has identified the affected infrastructure.

Microsoft said it is experiencing “elevated load”, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors, the update said.

“We’re restarting and repairing impacted portions of this infrastructure to restore capacity, and reviewing an unexpected increase in a specific type of service traffic to determine whether it’s contributing to the elevated load.”

Microsoft is now looking at ways to redirect traffic around the data bottleneck to get systems running again.

Some Microsoft software is down worldwide. Photo / Downdetector.com

The outage would be very embarrassing for Microsoft, said CEO of Gorilla Technology Paul Spain.

“So much of New Zealand’s business relies on Microsoft’s infrastructure, and when they break, they have a massive impact, not just on individual businesses but on the entire economy because it’s breaking productivity.”

The outage will likely cost the economy, said Spain. He argued that if hundreds of thousands of people are impacted and you multiply out the work each person does, then there is likely to be tens of millions of dollars lost in productivity.

Spain said this was a reminder that businesses safeguard their systems. He said if you’ve got everything in one basket, you’ll be very vulnerable to outages and cyber attacks.

However, if you move everything from one vendor to another, you’re in the same situation, Spain said, and suggested having multiple channels for critical functions so your business doesn’t completely grind to a halt.

Social media users on the Herald Facebook have made light of the situation.

Users on the Herald’s social media have made light of the situation, blaming the outage on Friday the 13th gremlins.

“Does this mean I have the day off seeing I WFH? ... must do right,” wrote one user.

Another suggested asking AI how to fix his AI.

On Reddit, one user said Outlook going down was the adult equivalent of a snow day.

More to come...