New Delhi, 13 November (H.S.): Microsoft's widespread technical disruption, which had affected services across the world for nearly 14 hours, began showing early signs of improvement on Friday. Following several recovery attempts, the company's services have gradually started returning to normal. The latest remedial measures have reportedly improved server stability and capacity in affected regions, although full restoration is still awaited.
In a significant step to safeguard users' important messages during the disruption, Microsoft has extended the email timeout window to 48 hours. The move is intended to ensure that emails delayed or held up because of the technical glitch are not lost and remain protected for at least 48 hours, allowing them to be delivered once services recover.
In an official update issued through Microsoft 365 Status, the company said recovery efforts were continuing. Detailed information about the incident has been made available in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under incident number MO1550821. General users can also monitor the latest developments through the company's service status page.
According to Microsoft's investigation, the disruption involved problems with the affected servers' ability to process requests and maintain stable operations. A process responsible for establishing secure connections became overwhelmed, causing servers to stop responding to requests. Initially, engineering teams attempted to address the issue by making configuration changes and restarting affected servers. The company also introduced an alternative health-check mechanism, which enabled some servers to return to service. However, as internet traffic began flowing back to these servers, some became unresponsive again.
After the initial recovery attempts failed to deliver sustained results, Microsoft revised its strategy and began implementing additional technical measures. Engineers redirected network traffic through alternative routes and isolated affected sections of the infrastructure. The company also temporarily restricted certain types of incoming traffic to reduce the load on its servers. These measures have begun producing results, with partial improvements reported in regions where traffic optimisation measures have been implemented. However, Microsoft has not yet declared the incident fully resolved, and recovery operations remain underway.
The technical disruption, which began on Thursday and continued into Friday morning in India, severely affected business and personal activities across the world. Millions of users in India, Japan, Europe and the United States encountered difficulties accessing services such as Microsoft Outlook, Teams and Copilot. The disruption was particularly severe in Japan, where some offices reportedly had to resort to decades-old fax machines to carry out routine communication.
The global outage also had a visible impact on the aviation and corporate sectors. Check-in systems used by airlines were affected at several airports, including Delhi airport, resulting in flight delays and the cancellation of some services. Operations at several banks and IT companies in India also slowed down. However, major institutions such as HDFC Bank reassured customers that their banking services remained secure and operational.
Interestingly, while employees across the world struggled with disrupted emails and online meetings, the outage also triggered a wave of humorous reactions on social media. Several users jokingly described it as an unexpected holiday, quipping that Microsoft had inadvertently discovered a new way to promote work-life balance.
Businesses and millions of users worldwide are now awaiting Microsoft's confirmation of a complete restoration of services. The extension of the email timeout window to 48 hours has provided considerable relief to the corporate sector, as it reduces the risk of losing important business communications delayed by the disruption.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
