Websites for Heathrow, NatWest, and Minecraft resumed operations late Wednesday following a significant global outage linked to Microsoft. The disruption, which saw thousands of users reporting issues on platforms like Downdetector, affected numerous websites for several hours.
Microsoft acknowledged that users of Microsoft 365 experienced delays, particularly with Outlook and other services. By 21:00 GMT, many of the affected websites were back online after the company rectified a previous update. The Azure cloud computing platform, which supports a substantial portion of internet services, reported a “degradation of some services” starting at 16:00 GMT, attributed to “DNS issues.” This technical glitch echoed a recent outage experienced by Amazon Web Services (AWS), although Amazon confirmed that its services were functioning normally.
In the UK, other notable sites impacted included supermarket chains Asda and M&S, as well as mobile operator O2. In the United States, users faced difficulties accessing the websites of Starbucks and retailer Kroger. During the outage, some Microsoft web pages displayed error messages indicating, “Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.”
Despite the temporary disruption of NatWest’s website, the bank maintained its mobile banking, web chat, and telephone customer services. The UK consumer organization Which? emphasized the importance of businesses keeping customers informed during such outages and suggested that consumers affected should document any failed or delayed payments for potential claims. Consumer law expert Lisa Webb advised, “Those worried about missing a bill should contact the relevant company to explain the situation and request that any fees be waived.”
Additionally, the Scottish Parliament faced disruptions as technical issues with its online voting system led to the suspension of business, including a debate on land reform legislation. A senior source indicated that these problems were likely related to the Microsoft outage.
Azure’s crucial role online
The full extent of the internet’s disruption remains uncertain, but Microsoft Azure is estimated to account for approximately 20% of the global cloud market. The company attributed the outage to “an inadvertent configuration change,” suggesting that an internal adjustment had unintended consequences.
The consolidation of cloud services among major players like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google means that outages can have widespread ramifications, potentially crippling hundreds or thousands of applications and systems. Dr. Saqib Kakvi from Royal Holloway University noted, “Due to the cost of hosting web content, economic forces lead to consolidation of resources into a few very large players, but it is effectively putting all our eggs in one of three baskets.”
Recent outages have highlighted the vulnerabilities inherent in the modern internet infrastructure. Engineering professor Gregory Falco from Cornell University remarked on the complexity of these systems, stating, “When we think of Azure or AWS, we think of a monolithic piece of technology infrastructure, but the reality is that it’s thousands if not tens of thousands of little pieces of a puzzle that are all interwoven together.” He pointed out that while some components are managed by the companies themselves, others are overseen by third parties, such as CrowdStrike, which previously deployed a software update affecting millions of Microsoft-operated computers.
