Microsoft Cloud Services Had 5 Hour Outage [UPDATE 2]

On the heels of my story about the Microsoft (MSFT) TechNet registration servers being down for five days, I received an email from a reader claiming that Microsoft Online Service, the current name for its cloud offerings, had a five hour outage. According to the tip, that included the hosted Exchange email service. This is clearly not the sort of thing corporations want to hear when considering who to trust going forward in cloud computing.

It's also clearly not the sort of thing that Microsoft executives would enjoy seeing widely communicated. I've tried checking online to see if there was any news of this, but there was nothing. That makes me a bit suspicious, as it would seem to be the sort of news that would have leaked out somewhere. However, that also doesn't necessarily rule it out. I've just emailed Microsoft's PR agency about this. However, given that it's been two days so far and they still haven't been able to dredge up a single comment on the registration server outage that lasted five days, I am not expecting any meaningful information in the near future about this.

If your company uses Microsoft Online Services and you can shed any light on this, please click on my byline at the top of this article for an email link. Happy to treat such communications as confidential.

[UPDATE: Although Microsoft's PR people don't know about this, verification of various types has been coming in from those affected. Here's a link to a Twitter feed in which an apparent Microsoft Online Services user writes, "Hey, uh, Microsoft Online Services team, could you reboot the server for us? None of us can connect and e-mail is kind of important. Thanks!"

Also, I have a copy of the following email anonymously provided:

Microsoft Online Services strives to provide exceptional service for all of our customers. On January 28, customers served from a North America data center may have experienced intermittent access to services included in the Business Productivity Online Suite. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your employees.We are committed to communicating with our customers in an open and honest manner about service issues and the steps we're taking to prevent recurrences.

• What happened?

o Monitoring alerted us to a possible issue with networking.

o Troubleshooting procedures ultimately pointed to a problem with network infrastructure, resulting in intermittent access for customers.

• What actions have been taken to prevent a recurrence?

o We have identified the root cause, and have taken steps to remediate the network issues.

We understand that any disruption in service may result in a disruption to your business. As a gesture of our commitment to ensuring the highest quality service experience, we are proactively providing your organization a 25 percent credit on your next monthly invoice. You do not need to contact Microsoft to receive this credit.

If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our customer support is available 24 hours a day by telephone or via Service Requests submitted from the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.

Thank you for choosing Microsoft Online Services to host your business productivity applications. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft Online Services Team

[UPDATE 2: I have confirmation from Microsoft that things went wrong - basically, the first paragraph of the email that a reader forwarded. No admission of how long the outage ran, surprise, surprise.]

Image via stock.xchng user caz777, site standard license.