Microsoft is today scrambling to fix a major global outage that has impacted multiple services including Outlook and Teams.
The 18-hour blackout, which Microsoft has chalked up to an overloading of servers, has reportedly disrupted UK schools, councils and 999 services (see here).
It is just the latest in a growing line (see here, here and here) of global tech outages highlighting just how reliant the world has become on just a handful of providers.
In its latest update, Microsoft said it is “seeing encouraging recovery progress in Europe, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure”.
But what’s the fall out among Microsoft’s partner base?
Here we round up some of the best comments that have landed in our (albeit depleted) inbox and on our LinkedIn feed this morning….
“This is the biggest outage that has happened”
Recording a post 16 hours into the blackout, Kevin O’Loughlin, CEO of Irish MSP Nostra characterised it as “the most significant Microsoft outage” since it launched Office 365 nearly 20 years ago.
“There’s nothing any IT company can do to get you back up and running on Microsoft quicker than Microsoft will,” he said.
Nostra’s website is now displaying a list of all Microsoft’s services and how they are currently functioning, he emphasised.
“Over-reliance on a single provider leaves businesses and public services vulnerable”
Always quick to stick the boot in when a global hyperscaler suffers an outage, the Open Cloud Coalition did not disappoint with a well-timed statement this morning highlighting the dangers of relying on a small clique of tech giants.
It exists to promote “a competitive, open, and resilient cloud services market across the UK, the European Union, and globally”.
“With EU and UK competition authorities scrutinising Microsoft, today’s events are a timely reminder of the very real economic and human costs of customer lock-in and dependency,” Nicky Stewart, Senior Advisor to the Open Cloud Coalition, stated.
Tom Henson, COO of Cheltenham-based MSP Emerge Digital, agreed.
“Yet again, a major outage has shown how much businesses rely on one set of tools to keep talking to the outside world. Too many continuity plans say ‘if email goes down, we’ll use Teams’, but this time email and Teams went down together,” he stated.
“Time to go old school”
Microsoft’s email outage prompted calls from many for businesses to embrace old-school techniques such as… the phone.
This included from Mit Patel, the MD of Assurix, which has developed a live trustmark for MSPs.
“If anyone wants a chat, I’m on the red phone all day” he stated.
“This is where we shine”
There may be little MSPs can do to actually restore Microsoft services, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be working their fingers to the bone today.
Lewis Hardie of Start Tech, gave a full break down of the Shrewsbury-based MSP’s response to the incident, starting with when its service desk opened at 7am this morning.
“Outages happen. What matters is how prepared your IT partner is when they do,” he wrote.
“So ask yourself: does your current IT provider have all of this in place?”
“One will probably include a picture of a lighthouse”
Anyone on LinkedIn today will be confronted with a flood of AI-massaged posts from commentators on the business lessons we can take from the outage.
“Somewhere, a LinkedIn ‘thought leader’ is already opening Claude and typing a prompt about ‘what this outage taught me about business continuity and resiliency’,” Shanna Utgard, an account executive at Compliance Scorecard, predicted last night.
“By tomorrow, we’ll have 100 posts about embracing uncertainty, building redundancy in business *AND* in life, and how sometimes we have to disconnect to reconnect with what really matters. One will probably include a picture of a lighthouse.
“Meanwhile, MSPs are answering 900 tickets and phone calls that all say some variation of ‘Outlook no work’.”
