Microsoft cloud computing platform, Azure, suffered a major outage on Wednesday, disrupting several of the company’s core services, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Minecraft, as well as websites run by external businesses such as Costco and Starbucks.
The disruption, which began around noon ET, has been acknowledged by Microsoft on its official service status page. According to the company, the issue appears to have been caused by “an inadvertent configuration change”, though engineers have not yet provided a timeline for full service restoration.
“We suspect that an inadvertent configuration change triggered this issue,” the company stated, adding that its teams are working to identify and reverse the root cause.
The outage underscores the widespread dependence on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, which powers thousands of enterprise, consumer, and third-party applications globally. For many users, access to emails, files, and online gaming platforms has been disrupted throughout the day.
The timing is particularly sensitive — the incident occurred just hours before Microsoft’s quarterly earnings announcement, where the company was expected to discuss continued growth in its cloud division.
This latest disruption follows a similar incident last week involving Amazon Web Services (AWS), which temporarily took down several websites, banks, and even government services. Together, the two incidents highlight how critical — and fragile — global cloud infrastructure has become.
As of publication, Microsoft has not confirmed when normal operations will resume. The company says updates will continue to be posted on the Azure Service Health Dashboard.
