Microsoft Corp. saw its online services, such as Outlook, Teams and others, go down for more than two hours. The cause was attributed to network problems.
Summary
Microsoft Outlook, Teams and other services go down for hours
The IT giant, Microsoft Corporation, has seen its online services, including Outlook, Teams and others, go down due to network problems.
Microsoft experiences widespread problems with its online services, including Outlook and Teams, that it attributed to networking issues https://t.co/FBZ3fsWJfL
— Bloomberg Technology (@technology) January 26, 2023
Between the hours of 7 AM and 9:30 AM in London, customers reported difficulties accessing and using Microsoft 365 services, such as the Outlook e-mail service and the Teams video conferencing tool. SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Graph, were also affected.
In this regard, the multinational tech company that makes computer, electronics, PC software and related services, Microsoft, said these difficulties arose because of network problems.
Microsoft fixed the network problem and automatically everything is restored
More specifically, it appears that a network configuration alteration had occurred. Microsoft was able to fix it by taking the proper steps, thus undoing the alteration.
In a status update on Azure, the cloud computing service that was also affected for nearly three hours, Microsoft reportedly stated the following:
“most impacted Microsoft services automatically recovered once network connectivity was restored,” Microsoft said in an Azure status update.”
Overall, reports of Microsoft service outages on Downdetector.com increased before 8:00 AM, but decreased significantly by 9:00 AM.
The $10 billion investment to acquire ChatGPT
News recently leaked that Microsoft may be interested in investing as much as $10 billion to acquire ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-based software that has become popular in recent weeks.
Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, ChatGPT, is still a prototype AI- and machine learning-based chatbot, specializing in direct conversation with human users, which is already being used by thousands of people.
Behind that prototype is OpenAI, a non-profit organization that creates user-friendly interfaces for people using AI. OpenAI’s founders include Elon Musk and Sam Altman, but also Stripe, JPMorgan, as well as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Microsoft is also part of OpenAI, but according to reports, the $10 billion investment would be used to acquire 49% of OpenAI LP, part of OpenAI.