Here’s a summary/analysis of the news article "Microsoft blames Outlook outage on another dodgy code change" from The Register:
Summary
- Incident: On March 19, 2025, users of Microsoft’s email service experienced a worldwide outage on Outlook’s web version, which blocked access to Exchange Online mailboxes.
- Cause: Microsoft attributed the issue to "a recent change made to a portion of Outlook on the web infrastructure," which negatively impacted service.
- Resolution: Microsoft reverted the change, which restored access to affected users. The company acknowledged the issue on social media, first admitting something was wrong, then confirming it was a recent change that caused the incident.
- Pattern: The article notes this kind of incident is “depressingly commonplace,” referencing a major outage earlier in March (also blamed on “dodgy code”).
- Impact: While end users lost access to email, the burden fell heaviest on enterprise administrators, who had little recourse other than contacting Microsoft support.
- Broader Issue: The article points to the risks and complexity inherent in massive cloud services, where a single engineer’s mistake can affect tens of thousands of customers, and stresses the importance of rigorous testing and understanding before production deployments.
- Accountability: The Register asked Microsoft about its change validation processes and guarantees for preventing recurrence, but received no initial response.
- Update: After publication, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "We are working to enhance our detection of similar events and reduce the time needed to identify, mitigate, or prevent such impacts."
- Outages caused by failed updates are a recurring issue for Microsoft’s cloud-based services.
- The response time and communication have improved, but such incidents cast doubt on Microsoft’s change management and testing rigor.
- End customers and especially IT administrators feel the brunt of downtime and repeated disruptions.
- Microsoft claims it is working to improve its detection and mitigation processes for such events.
Let me know if you need a deeper analysis or a rewrite for a different context!
Source: www.theregister.com Microsoft blames Outlook outage on another dodgy code change
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