Microsoft is scrambling to restore Azure cloud services after an "inadvertent configuration change" knocked out Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and dozens of major enterprise customers including Alaska Airlines and Starbucks. The outage began around noon ET and is slowly recovering, but exposed how deeply businesses depend on Microsoft's infrastructure.
Microsoft just delivered a masterclass in how not to handle cloud infrastructure. The company's Azure platform went down hard today, dragging Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and a shocking number of major enterprises into digital darkness with what the company admits was an "inadvertent configuration change."
The cascade started around 12:25 PM ET when Microsoft 365's status account first acknowledged "issues accessing Microsoft 365 services." But this wasn't just another routine service hiccup. Within hours, the outage had spread like wildfire across Azure's customer base, hitting everyone from airlines to coffee chains.
Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines found themselves telling passengers to physically visit airport counters for boarding passes because their online check-in systems were completely dead. Starbucks customers couldn't place mobile orders. Costco's website went dark. Even Minecraft players got kicked offline.
The timing couldn't have been worse. Microsoft was in the middle of reporting earnings when its own website started crawling to a halt. While CEO Satya Nadella was presumably discussing Azure's growth trajectory with analysts, the very infrastructure powering that growth was failing spectacularly.
According to Azure's status page, this wasn't a cyberattack or hardware failure - it was a DNS problem caused by someone changing the wrong configuration setting. In the world of cloud computing, that's like accidentally cutting the main power line to a city.
"We identified portions of internal infrastructure that are experiencing connectivity issues," Microsoft explained in a 1:02 PM update, adding they were working to "reroute affected traffic." Translation: We broke something fundamental and we're frantically trying to fix it.
The ripple effects revealed just how dependent modern business has become on Microsoft's cloud. Community Fibre, a UK internet provider, had to explain to customers why their service was affected by an American cloud company's mistake. shoppers couldn't access the grocery chain's apps. Capital One customers found themselves locked out of banking services.
