The frustration of being unable to connect, login and work on our machines is a reminder of how reliant we are on IT. It has also become so infrequent that when major disruption does occur, it is more confronting than ever.
While we’ve all found Microsoft 365 and Azure to be incredibly reliable but that hasn’t been the case today.
Originally, we understood that the outage was caused by a significant ‘Denial of Service’ attack. Azure status history | Microsoft Azure
Subsequently we’ve had advice that there is major ongoing connectivity issue on the internet that may be specific to New Zealand. Based on the calls we are getting from clients, it seems that a broad number of ISPs are impacted, and that some work for a while, then stop or slow down and vice-versa. We know that Microsoft and internet service providers are working hard to resolve the issue as quickly as they can.
The most recent update from Microsoft on this issue “MO844647” is:
31 July 2024, 9:32:49 pm
Title: Users may be unable to access Microsoft 365 services in New Zealand User impact: We don’t have detail on impact yet. We’re seeing an increase in user reported issues above our alerting threshold. More info: We’re receiving reports of issues impacting various Microsoft 365 service including but not limited to Exchange Online, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams within New Zealand. Current status: We’re reviewing service telemetry and available information and we’ll update this message shortly with our latest findings. Next update: Thursday, July 31, 2024, at 10:30 PM UTC