In a statement posted on X, the company said that work to address the root cause of the outage had been completed and that services had been restored for all customers.
Earlier on Saturday, Microsoft reported that services for consumer products had been fully restored by 16:10 GMT on Friday, while recovery efforts for some Microsoft 365 services used by enterprise customers were still ongoing.
The outage, which affected Microsoft services on Thursday and Friday, left millions of users unable to access email and office productivity tools. Disruptions were reported across multiple sectors, including banking, judicial systems and government institutions, in at least 74 countries.
Among the affected services were Outlook, the Teams communications platform, the Microsoft 365 productivity suite and the AI-powered assistant Copilot. Microsoft 365 has more than 430 million users worldwide, although the company has not disclosed how many were directly affected by the outage.
The disruption affected the operations of public institutions and businesses in numerous countries.
In the United Kingdom, the outage caused problems across the healthcare sector, schools, the rail network and Parliament. Emergency service operators handling urgent calls were reportedly unable to transmit patient information through standard channels, resulting in delays. The Bank of England and other public institutions also reported email service disruptions. In Japan, the outage affected the operations of government ministries and other public agencies. Airlines, transport operators and courier companies also experienced communication-related difficulties.
In India, the outage disrupted airline operations, complicating communications and day-to-day service management.
In Australia, intelligence agencies, government institutions and healthcare providers also reported service disruptions. The outage affected remote medical consultations, school operations and business communications.
According to Bloomberg, the outage also had an impact on financial markets, with some brokers unable to access trading platforms and forced to rely on telephone communications. Artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, also reported service issues.
In countries such as France and Spain, where public administration systems rely more heavily on domestic technological infrastructure, no major disruptions were reported, although some private businesses were affected.
In Poland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said on Friday that the outage highlighted the risks associated with dependence on global technology providers. He announced plans to support the development of open-source solutions within the public sector. Deputy Minister for Digital Affairs Dariusz Standerski said that public administration services in Poland continued to operate without disruption thanks to the country's own electronic document management system.
On Friday evening, Microsoft said that the outage, one of the longest in the company's history and the second major incident this year, was not caused by a cyberattack or malicious activity involving artificial intelligence systems.
The company said the disruption resulted from an overload in a process responsible for establishing secure connections on its servers.
(pu)
Source: PAP