First Thing: Global Microsoft outage chaos as tech firm says there are ‘signs of stabilisation’

Users of Microsoft Teams and Outlook in businesses and public services reporting problems. Plus would you like to spend time as a helpful furry little post delivery service? Good morning. A global outage of vital Microsoft systems has crippled businesses and public services aroun

Users of Microsoft Teams and Outlook in businesses and public services reporting problems. Plus would you like to spend time as a helpful furry little post delivery service? Good morning.

A global outage of vital Microsoft systems has crippled businesses and public services around the world. The tech company said it was seeing “early signs of stabilisation” after the failure affected millions of users for more than 12 hours on Thursday and Friday. Some but not all users were reporting problems with services including Microsoft Teams and Outlook email.

More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, and more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies use Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, according to the company. Microsoft said that there were no indications that the outage had been caused by a cyber-attack. We are covering the recovery efforts and ongoing impact in this live blog .

Who are the main people involved? For more information on the cast of characters, Dan Milmo has this profile of outgoing Huang , who went from washing dishes at Denny’s to becoming the rockstar of AI, and Dara Kerr has this piece answering the question: Who is Colette Kress ? And yesterday my newsletter colleague Hettie O’Brien had this excellent breakdown of what we do (and don’t) know about Alice Huang .

We also have this timeline of how the scandal unfolded . Continue reading...