A disruption in Microsoft (MS) cloud "Azure" service on the 29th (local time) caused widespread chaos.
According to Bloomberg and others, the MS cloud service outage that day disrupted Alaska Airlines check-in and halted a scheduled vote in the Scottish Parliament. Other sites, including Starbucks and the retailer Kroger, also went down.
MS's workplace service "365" and its artificial intelligence (AI) Copilot service were also paralyzed.
According to the U.S. online service tracking site Downdetector, MS cloud service disruptions became pronounced after 11 a.m. Eastern time that day.
Early in the incident, Azure said on its online service status page, "We are investigating a situation in which customers may experience access issues related to Azure Portal connectivity," adding, "We will provide additional information soon."
In a subsequent update notice, Azure said an "unintended configuration change" in its infrastructure was suspected as the cause, and that it was "blocking all changes to the 'Azure Front Door' (AFD) service while simultaneously rolling back to the last known good state."
At one point that day, Azure's status page reported network issues in all data center regions worldwide.
Azure said in an update that it expected all services to be restored by 7:20 p.m. Eastern time.
As of 6:30 p.m. that day, outage reports for Azure on Downdetector had decreased to around 100.
Earlier last week, Amazon's cloud service Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a large-scale outage. Local media said concerns are growing over the reliability of online services.
MS released its quarterly results that day but issued no official comment regarding the cloud service disruption.
In July last year, MS caused global disruption when Windows systems were crippled by an issue that occurred during a software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.