Arabic version: مايكروسوفت تعتذر مع تعافي الخدمات العالمية
According to The Guardian, Microsoft said it was “deeply sorry” after a global outage disrupted services for millions of customers and partners. The company said it was seeing broad recovery and stability, while continuing to restore service for remaining customers and regions.
Microsoft said the incident was a technical issue “not related to cyber or AI / agents”. It said the problem was introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade and surfaced following a recent network change. The company said it had addressed the underlying issue and restored services gradually while validating stability at each stage, adding that it would issue a full post-incident report once its review was complete.
In the UK, the cyber minister Baroness Elizabeth Lloyd said the government had been working with Microsoft to understand the impact on public services. She said the outage mainly affected back-office functions, including email and messaging, while 999 calls and the NHS 111 line were unaffected. Lloyd described the disruption as “inconvenient and disruptive” and said there had been limited reports of effects on frontline service delivery.
The NHS experienced what senior health sources described as “serious” and “widespread” disruption, affecting hospitals, GP surgeries and community health services. NHS.net Connect, used by more than one million staff for email, meetings, calendars and file access, is powered by Microsoft. Some staff turned to paper records after losing access to email and other IT facilities. NHS England said local services were using established measures to ensure critical services and appointments could continue, while patients were urged to attend appointments unless advised otherwise and to keep using 999 in emergencies.
In the United States, some cities reported services returning. Arapahoe County, Colorado, said an issue affecting online bond payments had been resolved, while Greensboro, North Carolina, said its email was working again. Jacksonville said it was seeing some services restored, and Austin and Dallas also reported progress. Other authorities had warned that email and communications systems remained disrupted, including emergency management services in Texas and the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department.
