The Azure outage that touched applications across the web and the global economy on Wednesday appears to be over.
A Microsoft dashboard on Azure’s status showed no active events as of Wednesday evening.
The Independent has contacted the company for further information.
The apparent end comes after the outage caused issues on the website for London’s Heathrow Airport, while Alaska Airlines wrote on X that the outage caused “disruption to key systems, including our websites,” and customers reported lines at the terminal.
Microsoft confirmed the original outage, blaming an “inadvertent configuration change” for the problems.
Customers also reported issues with the Starbucks app and the Costco website, while others claimed difficulties using Microsoft-affiliated products like Office 365, Minecraft and Xbox Live.
Some users on downdetector.com also reported outages with Amazon Web Services, though the tech giant denied any issues with its cloud service.
The Azure outage comes a week after issues on Amazon’s cloud platform impacted numerous companies and apps.
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Key Points
- Microsoft outage appears to be over
- Azure has pushed 'last known good configuration,' customers may see recovery
- Alaska Airlines says Azure issues causing 'disruption to key systems'
- Amazon denies an AWS outage is underway
ICYMI: Azure revenue up 40 per cent, quarterly results reveal
06:45
,
Vishwam Sankaran
As Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service was experiencing an outage, Microsoft released its quarterly revenue data yesterday, revealing that its cloud computing service had strong growth with revenue up 40 per cent compared to last quarter.
The tech giant posted stronger-than-expected quarterly results yesterday, with its revenue jumping 18 per cent to $77.7 billion as the demand for its artificial intelligence services appeared to boost its cloud computing business.
Microsoft also revealed its strategy to double its data centre network worldwide in the next two years with the company's chief Satya Nadella citing strong growth in AI use and the tech giants partnership with OpenAI as factors influencing this expansion.
'Business must inform and compensate customers', consumer watchdog says
06:00
,
Vishwam Sankaran
Widespread outage such as the one that affected Azure cloud services could make consumers unable to make payments or access important accounts, and may quickly lead to missed bills and overdraft charges.
"Businesses must ensure customers are kept informed and supported while services are restored, and anyone left out of pocket should be swiftly compensated," consumer law expert Lisa Webb from UK watchdog Which? said.
"Customers should keep evidence of any failed or delayed payments in case they need to make a claim, and those worried about missing a bill should contact the relevant company to explain the situation and request that any fees be waived," Ms Webb said in a statement.
Such large-scale outages highlight how dependent everyday life has become on tech providers.
"With services from airports and supermarkets to banks and communications networks relying on Microsoft’s systems, millions of people could be affected," Ms Webb said.
Microsoft confirms Azure issue 'now mitigated'
05:02
,
Vishwam Sankaran
The issue behind the hours-long Azure outage, which affected systems dependent on the cloud service worldwide, is "now mitigated", according to Microsoft.
"Engineers have confirmed that an issue which impacted a subset of Azure services is now mitigated," Azure Support posted on X.
Microsoft attributed the outage to an "inadvertent configuration change" within Azure's cloud content delivery network.
The change "triggered a widespread service disruption affecting both Microsoft services and customer applications dependent on AFD for global content delivery", the tech giant said in a statement.
"Safeguards have since been reviewed and additional validation and rollback controls have been immediately implemented to prevent similar issues in the future," Microsoft said.
"Our team will be completing an internal retrospective to understand the incident in more detail and will share findings within 14 days. Once we complete our internal retrospective, generally within 14 days, we will publish a final Post Incident Review (PIR) to all impacted customers," it said.
Azure and AWS outages point to 'systemic risk' for Europe, expert says
04:43
,
Vishwam Sankaran
The Microsoft Azure outage coming just days after the global AWS disruption points to "systemic risk of Europe’s dependence on the two dominant cloud providers", says Nicky Stewart, senior advisor to the Open Cloud Coalition, an advocacy group promoting a competitive, cloud services industry across the UK and EU.
The two incidents have shown that major platforms like banks, government services, and global apps, can be brought to a standstill when resilience isn’t built into the global cloud ecosystem.
"Successive outages on this scale show how a single technical fault can ripple through essential services, public infrastructure, and the wider economy. The pattern of repeated disruption underlines the urgent need for diversification," Ms Stewart said, according to Tech Wire.
She called for the UK Competition and Markets Authority, which tackles unfair market behaviour, to "move at pace" to implement fixes that "foster a more open, competitive, and interoperable cloud market, one where resilience comes from choice, not dependence on the two dominant providers".
Microsoft has 'mitigated' issue affecting Azure Front Door
04:21
,
Katie Hawkinson
A Microsoft spokesperson announced the company has “mitigated” an issue with Azure Front Door that was impacting service availability.
“We have mitigated an issue affecting Azure Front Door that impacted the availability of some services,” the spokesperson said. “Should customers require further assistance related to this issue, they can submit a support ticket. Additional updates can be found in impacted customer Cloud portals and on the Azure status page.”
How long did Azure outage last?
03:59
,
Vishwam Sankaran
Microsoft said in an official statement that the outage of its Azure cloud services lasted for over 8 hours, adding that the issue has finally been resolved.
"While error rates and latency are back to pre-incident levels, a small number of customers may still be seeing issues, and we are still working to mitigate this long tail," Microsoft Azure said.
The Azure outage follows last week's disruption of Amazon's cloud service AWS, which caused global turmoil across online platforms, including Snapchat and Reddit.
The AWS disruption was the largest since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction, which crippled systems worldwide, including airports, hospitals, and banks, raising questions about the vulnerability of global cloud infrastructure.
Services impacted by Azure outage
03:41
,
Vishwam Sankaran
Websites belonging to a range of services, including those of NatWest, Heathrow, and Vodafone in the UK, as well as Starbucks and Costco in the US were impacted by the Azure outage yesterday.
In the US Alaska Airlines said it experienced disruption to key systems, including its check-in services, following the Azure outage.
Online video games running on the cloud server were also affected as reported by Minecraft players and Obsidian Entertainment, the company behind the role playing game The Outer Worlds 2.
"Due to an ongoing Azure service outage, The Outer Worlds 2 may be temporarily unavailable to purchase or install," Obsidian said in a post on X.
Estimates suggest about 20 per cent of the global cloud market runs on Azure and the platform's "inadvertent configuration change" affected parent company Microsoft's services as well, including those of Xbox and Outlook.
The number of users reporting issues with Azure has dropped to about a dozen as of 4.21am BST (11.21pm ET), from a peak of over 18,000 yesterday, according to Downdetector.
Microsoft reveals what caused Azure outage
02:48
,
Vishwam Sankaran
The hours-long Azure outage was triggered by an "inadvertent configuration change", Microsoft said, adding that it was "rolling back to our last known good state".
"We've identified a recent configuration change to a portion of Azure infrastructure, which we believe is causing the impact," the tech giant's cloud-based subscription service, Microsoft 365 said.
Microsoft later confirmed in a post on X that the issue has been resolved.
"After extended monitoring, we confirmed that impact stemming from the Azure configuration change has been resolved," it said.
Microsoft's other big shakeup: layoffs
02:00
,
Josh Marcus
An Azure outage wasn’t the only thing troubling Microsoft recently.
The company is also working through plans to cut some 9,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs.
Such workforce reductions, which are taking place across the tech industry at the same time as it invests heavily in AI, has prompted California lawmaker Rep. Ro Khanna to propose an AI New Deal jobs plan.
Here’s a recap on Microsoft’s layoff plans.
Inbox: Analyst estimates Microsoft lost $1.2m per hour during Azure outage
01:00
,
Josh Marcus
The Azure outage may have cost Microsoft’s gaming division roughly $1.2 million per hour, according to an analysis from Support My Website, a web support firm.
"This $1.2 million hourly loss is just the damage to Microsoft's own pocket; it doesn't even begin to count the massive, uncalculated losses for all the other major brands, from airlines to retailers, that were also brought offline," Lucas Lopvet, director of support at Support My Website, told The Independent in an email.
Microsoft outage appears to be over
00:50
,
Josh Marcus
Today’s lengthy Azure outage appears to have finished.
A Microsoft dashboard showing the cloud service’s health was reporting no active incidents as of Wednesday evening.
The same portal previously showed engineers rolling out fixes to patch up the cloud service, as the outage appeared to snare travel sites, consumer apps, and gaming services.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information.
Microsoft stock falls in after-hours trading
00:22
,
Josh Marcus
Throughout the day, Microsoft stock held relatively steady, despite the ongoing Azure outage, with shares falling about one tenth of one percent.
However, in overnight trading, things got worse, and shares fell by about 3.76 percent as of Wednesday evening, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Microsoft pushes back recovery time by an hour
Wednesday 29 October 2025 23:57
,
Josh Marcus
Just when you thought it was over, the Azure outage may last a bit longer than planned.
The company previously estimated that full mitigation of problems on the platform would’ve occurred about half an hour ago.
Now, it has revised that estimate, and the company says it will require about 40 more minutes for its technical fixes to fully take effect.
“We have revised our mitigation time and are currently tracking toward full mitigation by 00:40 UTC on 30 October 2025, though we will communicate if mitigation is achieved sooner,” the Azure status page reads.
Issue reports taper off as Microsoft says a fix will take effect shortly
Wednesday 29 October 2025 23:42
,
Josh Marcus
The Azure outage may be coming to a close.
Users across a variety of applications were reporting far fewer problems throughout Wednesday evening on applications like the Xbox Network, Microsoft 365, Minecraft, and Outlook, according to crowd-sourced data on Downdetector.
The decline in reports could simply be a factor of consumers reporting their issues once then resuming their days, or it could be a sign that the technical fixes Microsoft has been detailing to solve the problem are in fact taking effect.
'Strong signs' Microsoft outage could be resolved soon, company says
Wednesday 29 October 2025 23:20
,
Josh Marcus
The Azure outage could soon be over, Microsoft says.
The company suggested in a web post that it’s expecting its technical fixes to kick in fully and mitigate the problem momentarily.
“We are seeing strong signs of improvement across affected regions and are tracking toward full mitigation by 23:20 UTC on 29 October 2025,” the company wrote.
Microsoft outage is a reminder of our fragile 'digital backbone,' expert says
Wednesday 29 October 2025 22:53
,
Josh Marcus
The Amazon and Microsoft cloud outages in recent days are a warning sign.
Because so many organizations and companies rely on a handful of giant tech companies for key services like cloud computing, problems within one firm quickly radiate out onto the entire internet, according to Munish Walther-Puri, an adjunct faculty member at IANS Research and the former director of cyber risk for the city of New York.
“Organizations may think they’re insulated by their choice of cloud provider, but dependencies run deeper,” he told WIRED. “When key partners rely on other hyperscalers, exposure multiplies. As AI becomes the next layer of critical infrastructure, these outages demonstrate the brittleness of our digital backbone.”
Microsoft confirms which of its services have been hit in Azure breakdown
Wednesday 29 October 2025 22:30
,
Josh Marcus
Microsoft has just released an in-depth breakdown on some of the main areas impacted in today’s Azure outage.
Here are the products they flagged: App Service, Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Communication Services, Azure Databricks, Azure Healthcare APIs, Azure Maps, Azure Portal, Azure SQL Database, Container Registry, Media Services, Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Sentinel, Video Indexer, and Virtual Desktop.
Users have also reported problems on Microsoft-affiliated platforms like Xbox Live, Minecraft, and Office 365.
How to monitor if your cloud provider is down
Wednesday 29 October 2025 22:10
,
Josh Marcus
Online crowd-sourcing sites and social media can provide early warning about cloud outages, but the most reliable way to track the status of platforms like Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS is through official company channels.
Amid outages, how the tech industry can mitigate the risks of relying on outside cloud providers
Wednesday 29 October 2025 21:50
,
Josh Marcus
Recent cloud outages highlight the vulnerabilities of relying so much on cloud computing – or “the cloud” as it’s often called. But there are ways to mitigate some of the risks.
Here’s a piece from Jongkil Jay Jeong, written after last week’s Amazon outage, on what can be done.
How meme-makers are processing the Azure outage
Wednesday 29 October 2025 21:30
,
Josh Marcus
The ongoing Microsoft Azure problems today may be causing technical issues at airports and popular websites, but that hasn’t stopped people from venting in memes.
Some riffed on the back-to-back timing of the Azure outage coming on the heels of problems last week with Amazon’s AWS, while others complained that they had access to Microsoft tech that was still functioning, forcing them to keep working when others got an unexpected break.
More than 180,000 outage reports filed about Azure and AWS
Wednesday 29 October 2025 21:10
,
Josh Marcus
More than 180,000 reports of outages on Azure and AWS flooded in today on Downdetector, the crowd-sourced online monitoring service from Ookla.
An Ookla spokesperson told The Independent more than 131,000 of those reports concerned Azure, while more than 54,000 were about AWS. (Amazon says reports about an AWS outage are incorrect and the platform is functioning normally.)
Ookla emphasizes that its data is drawn from user reports, including claims on social media, and should be considered an unofficial “early warning system.”
"Another day, another major cloud outage,” company analyst Luke Kehoe wrote in a statement provided to The Independent. “Microsoft Azure has knocked many services offline worldwide, with a wide blast radius across airlines, banks and government agencies. It is the second such event this month highlighting the systemic risks of concentration and single points of logical failure, regardless of how physically hardened the infrastructure is.”
Cybersecurity expert warns of scams in wake of Azure outage
Wednesday 29 October 2025 20:50
,
Josh Marcus
Scammers may try to take advantage of the ongoing Microsoft outage, according to a tech security expert.
“Tell your teams to expect potential phishing texts, calls, emails (once back up) claiming Microsoft is down because they need to “update their password, click here”, etc,” Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, wrote on X. “Criminals love to take advantage of outages to trick. Catch them!”
Azure outage is latest tech trouble for Alaska Airlines after ground stop last week
Wednesday 29 October 2025 20:37
,
Josh Marcus
Alaska Airlines has had a seriously bad week of tech problems.
Today, the company announced that the ongoing Azure outages have caused “disruption to key systems, including our websites.”
The shutdown prompted angry messages on social media from customers, including one who posted pictures of a long line at an airport check-in kiosk.
Today’s issue come less than a week after an IT outage prompted Alaska to issue a systemwide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights, causing delays and cancellations.
Here’s Rhian Lubin’s earlier report on the ground stop.
Azure outage comes same day as optimistic Microsoft earnings report
Wednesday 29 October 2025 20:20
,
Josh Marcus
Today’s ongoing Azure outage hit the same day Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings.
Thankfully, company executives had some good news on the latter front.
Microsoft reported $77.7 billion in revenue, beating Wall Street predictions. It also saw better-than-expected growth in its Azure business of about 40 percent.
The company notched a 24 percent increase in operating income, too.
Microsoft blames 'inadvertent configuration change' for Azure issues
Wednesday 29 October 2025 20:13
,
Josh Marcus
Microsoft has identified a culprit for the ongoing issues on its Azure cloud platform.
“We have confirmed that an inadvertent configuration change was the trigger event for this issue,” the company wrote on the Azure dashboard, noting that customers using services tied to the Azure Front Door “may have experienced latencies, timeouts, and errors.”
Microsoft says that since detecting the issue it has successfully deployed its “last known good” configuration across Azure.
“Customers may have begun to see initial signs of recovery,” the company added. “We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement.”
Scottish Parliament suspends voting due to technical issues
Wednesday 29 October 2025 19:58
,
Josh Marcus
It’s not just airports feeling the ripples of today’s Azure issues.
Voting was suspended Wednesday evening in the Scottish Parliament due to resulting technical issues.
“There is, I understand, a significant Microsoft outage affecting some products, and it is global, and that is preventing us from voting,” Alison Johnstone, Holyrood’s presiding officer, said of the problem, STV reports.
Microsoft outage shuts down website of London's Heathrow Airport
Wednesday 29 October 2025 19:49
,
Josh Marcus
Travelers across the world are feeling the impacts of today’s Azure issues.
A significant Microsoft outage shut down the website of London’s Heathrow Airport, though the problems thus far have not caused delays or cancellations, The London Evening Standard reports.
Vodafone users in UK feel issues from Azure outage
Wednesday 29 October 2025 19:44
,
Josh Marcus
Customers of Vodafone, the major UK telecoms carrier, appear to also have been impacted by today’s Azure issues, Reuters reports.
One X user wrote that the company’s Voxi mobile network was having issues sending a one-time password for security purposes.
Azure has pushed last known good configuration,' customers may see recovery
Wednesday 29 October 2025 19:20
,
Isabel Keane
Azure has shared an update saying its “last known good configuration” has been pushed and customers will soon see recovery.
“We have pushed our ‘last known good’ configuration, and customers may begin to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement.”
Azure said customer configuration changes will remain temporarily blocked as they continue mitigation efforts.
Flashback: How last week's major cloud outage hit
Wednesday 29 October 2025 19:15
,
Josh Marcus
Microsoft 365 experiencing 'downstream impact' from Azure issues
Wednesday 29 October 2025 18:59
,
Josh Marcus
Users of popular Microsoft apps may be feeling the impacts of the ongoing issues with the Azure cloud, the company announced.
“Microsoft 365 services are experiencing downstream impact related to the ongoing Azure outage,” it wrote on X.
Alaska Airlines says Azure issues causing 'disruption to key systems'
Wednesday 29 October 2025 18:47
,
Josh Marcus
Multiple airlines say the ongoing issues at Azure have impacted crucial operations.
“Due to a global outage impacting the Microsoft Azure platform where several Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines services are hosted, we are currently experiencing a disruption to key systems, including our websites,” Alaska wrote on X about an hour ago.
“Wtf is going on here?” customer Justin Abel wrote on X, along with pictures of a line at a check-in desk. “I’m going to miss my flight and your systems are unresponsive.”
Microsoft says a fix is imminent
Wednesday 29 October 2025 18:19
,
Josh Marcus
Microsoft says its Azure services will soon be back to normal.
“We have initiated the deployment of our 'last known good' configuration,” the company just wrote on its Azure dashboard. “This is expected to be fully deployed in about 30 minutes from which point customers will start to see initial signs of recovery. Once this is completed, the next stage is to start to recover nodes while we route traffic through these healthy nodes.”
Amazon denies an AWS outage is underway
Wednesday 29 October 2025 18:14
,
Josh Marcus
Despite a brief surge in consumer issue reports on Wednesday, AWS says there is not an outage on its cloud platform.
“AWS is operating normally,” an AWS spokesperson told The Independent. “The only resource on the internet that provides accurate data on the availability of our services is the AWS Health Dashboard.”
Where are users reporting issues?
Wednesday 29 October 2025 18:13
,
Josh Marcus
Whenever there are issues with cloud service providers, their effects are soon felt across internet-connected apps and services throughout the economy.
According to unofficial crowd-sourced data on Downdetector, there has been a spike in reported issues today from users of the Xbox Network, Xfinity customers, Microsoft Teams users, and Starbucks rewards members.
Microsoft Azure announces issues of its own
Wednesday 29 October 2025 17:51
,
Josh Marcus
While Amazon disputes reports of an AWS outage, Microsoft has publicly announced issues today on its Azure cloud platform.
“Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, customers and Microsoft services that leverage Azure Front Door (AFD) may have experienced issues resulting in latencies, timeouts and errors,” the company wrote on the Azure website. “We have confirmed that an inadvertent configuration change as the trigger event for this issue.”
Amazon says service is running normally and points to corporate dashboard
Wednesday 29 October 2025 17:35
,
Josh Marcus
There aren’t any ongoing issues with AWS, according to Amazon.
“AWS is operating normally,” the company said in a statement.
“The only resource on the internet that provides accurate data on the availability of our services is the AWS Health Dashboard.”
That dashboard does not show any outages at the moment.
Another AWS outage hits
Wednesday 29 October 2025 17:22
,
Josh Marcus
Another Amazon Web Services outage has reportedly hit, impacting thousands.
We’ll be tracking whether today’s reported AWS issue has similar ripple effects to the one that hit last week.
Follow along for the latest updates
