Microsoft confirmed that its Azure cloud services are finally back online following a widespread eight-hour outage that affected millions of customers and multiple services all across the globe, while simultaneous AWS issues exacerbated impacts.
The major Microsoft outage started at 3:45pm UTC, and was caused by an inadvertent configuration change within Azure Front Door (AFD) — Microsoft’s content delivery network.
The error caused AFD nodes to fail, impacting several apps, including Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, Heathrow Airport, Alaska Airlines, and more. Even the Scottish Parliament faced disruptions.
According to the American tech giant, the restoration process started at 6:45pm and was completed by midnight. The outage got aggravated by a software bug that disabled protective mechanism, causing cascading failures.
Meanwhile, Amazon denied the outage, stating, “AWS is operating normally and this reporting is incorrect.”
Furthermore, Microsoft rolled back to the last stable configuration in a slow recovery to avoid instability.
Notably, the major Microsoft and AWS outage was followed by a similar AWS disruption that occurred on October 20, 2025, underscoring increasing concerns and dependence on several major US cloud providers.
Industry experts, including Civo’s CEO Mark Boost and the Open Cloud Coalition’s Nicky Stewart, have called for broader expansion, interoperability, and resilience, warning that repeated major outages demonstrate the risks of over-dependence on centralized cloud infrastructure.
