Microsoft has apologised after thousands of customers worldwide reported problems with its products, ranging from the email service Outlook to the popular game Minecraft.
On Tuesday afternoon, Downdetector, which monitors websites, revealed that thousands of people had reported problems.
The incident comes less than two weeks after a major global IT outage caused by a flawed software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike rendered over eight million computers running Microsoft systems inaccessible, affecting healthcare and travel.
Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem that “shows improvement”, and will monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery.”
But it has separately told people it has “no ETA” for how long the issue would take to resolve.
The tech giant previously said it was “investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally.”
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Our experts are currently investigating the situation in order to resolve it as soon as possible.”
It comes hours before Microsoft is set to announce its latest financial reports at 2230 BST.
An alert on the technology giant’s service status website said the outage impacted Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform behind many of its services, and Microsoft 365, which includes systems like Microsoft Office and Outlook.
It also listed its cloud systems, Intune and Entra, as among those impacted.
“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.
“The culprit appears to be network infrastructure, but you would have hoped that with such important cloud-based systems, there would not be a single point of failure.
“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
The outage appears to have also impacted other services that rely on Microsoft’s platforms, with Cambridge Water among those affected.
“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services, including MyAccount and PayNow,” it said in a post on X.
