Microsoft 365 Restored in Japan and China After Major Regional Outage
Microsoft 365 services were fully restored in Japan and China following a significant regional outage that disrupted thousands of users. The incident, which began early Thursday, affected key applications such as Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot. This outage severely impacted business operations and remote work in both countries.
Details of the Microsoft 365 Outage
The outage commenced around 12:00 AM UTC (5:30 AM IST). Users reported being unable to sign in to Microsoft 365 applications, encountering repeated timeouts, particularly when trying to access cloud-based files or utilize Copilot features. Early investigations indicated that a routing fault within Microsoft’s service infrastructure was the primary cause of the disruptions.
Root Cause of the Service Disruption
- The outage resulted from a routing misconfiguration.
- This issue isolated some parts of otherwise healthy infrastructure.
- There were no indications of any cyberattacks associated with the outage.
Microsoft engineers took immediate action, implementing mitigation strategies throughout the morning. These steps involved rebalancing traffic across backup systems to stabilize service delivery. By approximately 12:10 PM JST, the engineers reported successful progress, indicating that services were beginning to return to normal.
User Communication and Updates
Throughout the incident, Microsoft provided regular updates via its official Microsoft 365 Status account on X (formerly Twitter). In their final message regarding the outage, they confirmed that their measures had effectively resolved the issues impacting users. For more details, they directed users to reference MO1198797 in the admin center.
Impact on Users and Organizations
Despite the resolution of the outage, its impact was felt across numerous organizations relying on Microsoft’s cloud-based tools. Although no data loss or security threats were reported, essential services such as email access, file synchronization, and internal communications were significantly disrupted.
In conclusion, the swift response from Microsoft and their continuous updates helped mitigate the effects of the outage, allowing users in Japan and China to regain access to Microsoft 365 services.
