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Microsoft shares showed resilience on Wall Street, recovering from an early pre-market decline to end marginally higher on Friday, even as the technology giant grappled with one of the longest global service disruptions in its history. The outage, which affected workplace communications across more than 70 countries for over 24 hours, initially triggered investor concerns but failed to sustain pressure on the stock.
Microsoft shares had fallen around 2.5% to 3% in pre-market trading as the disruption entered its second day and uncertainty grew over when services would return to normal. However, the stock recovered during the session and closed nearly flat, up 0.17% at $523.88. The shares have gained roughly 8% so far this year.
The recovery came as Microsoft rolled out measures to stabilise its systems before confirming on Saturday, November 14, that services had been fully restored across Outlook, Teams, Copilot and the broader Microsoft 365 suite. The market reaction suggested that investors were treating the incident as a temporary operational setback, although the disruption has renewed questions about the dependence of businesses on a handful of major technology providers.
Microsoft said on Saturday that it had completed efforts to address the underlying issue and restored services for the remaining affected customers and regions.
"We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions," the company said in a post on X.
The company apologised for the inconvenience caused and said email backlogs had cleared, with service health returning to normal across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. It also said it would continue monitoring enterprise systems to identify and address any residual issues.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously," Microsoft had said on X on Friday.
The outage affected Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 products, including the Copilot AI assistant. These applications are widely used by businesses and government agencies, with hundreds of millions of users relying on them for everyday communication and workplace collaboration.
The disruption began on Thursday afternoon following an issue linked to a routine network capacity upgrade. Microsoft said server problems affected features connected to Exchange Online, its cloud-based email and scheduling service.
The disruption to Exchange Online had a knock-on effect on connected applications, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, while unconnected applications remained operational. Organisations hosting Microsoft services on their own servers, rather than relying on its cloud infrastructure, were relatively less affected.
Microsoft said it was not aware of any malicious activity and ruled out a cyberattack. It also clarified that the incident was not caused by an artificial intelligence malfunction.
Reports of the outage began rising around 1725 GMT on Thursday, according to Ookla. Downdetector recorded more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, with reports peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute — more than 1,500 times normal levels. At the peak of the crisis, the outage tracker also recorded nearly 200,000 user reports.
The disruption extended well beyond missed emails and delayed virtual meetings. Businesses, airlines, hospitals, government agencies and financial institutions across several countries had to find alternative ways to communicate and continue operations.
In India, airlines including IndiGo and Akasa Air reported disruptions to customer-support email services, while Air India rerouted communications to keep operations running. Hospitals in the United Kingdom's National Health Service reverted to paper records, while rail operators in Canada and Europe faced ticketing delays.
Government ministries in Japan and Singapore also reported email disruptions. Trading firms experienced delays, while some companies faced difficulties publishing financial results. US-listed electric truck maker Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly earnings call because of the communication breakdown.
The latest incident has renewed concerns about the risks of relying heavily on a small number of technology companies for essential workplace software and the cloud infrastructure supporting it.
This was Microsoft's second service disruption this year, following an outage involving its Microsoft 365 services in January. The company also experienced a disruption in October last year. Last month, an outage affecting its Azure cloud platform disrupted productivity software and impacted businesses across several industries worldwide.
Disclaimer: This story is for educational purposes only. Please consult with an investment advisor before making any investment decisions.
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