Microsoft Teams suffers major outage as Europe starts work from home amid coronavirus

Microsoft’s messaging and collaboration tool ‘Teams’ suffered major outage affecting users across Europe. The app was back up online after almost two hours of interruption.

Microsoft Teams wobbles (Microsoft)

Microsoft Teams, a chat and collaboration tool for professionals, suffered a major outage on Monday. The outage, which lasted for roughly two hours, affected mostly European users who logged on the app to work remotely amid coronavirus outbreak.

According to reports, Microsoft Teams suffered outage early morning in Europe. According to downdetector.com, the outage started around 4PM IST and hit a big spike outage reports around 6.30PM. Most reported problems were "server connection", "log in", and "website.". A Live outage map showed users in Europe were affected by the service interruption. There are small outage hotspots in parts of the US.

 

Impact with TM206544 has been mitigated. Please see the admin center for details. ^JP

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 16, 2020

Microsoft was quick to acknowledge the issue and was able to bring Teams back up online after almost two hours. "Impact with TM206544 has been mitigated. Please see the admin center for details," said the company in a tweet without elaborating the reasons for the outage.

 

Microsoft Teams is down in most parts of Europe after many logon from home. Cloud productivity platforms are about to undergo a major test in the coming days.

— Tom Makau (@tommakau) March 16, 2020

 

It didn't take long, Microsoft Teams and other office365 services are overloaded. This is what happens when we rely on one supplier. What would exactly happen to the world if MS goes down?

— 🇨🇭 Pascal in wild west 2020 (@spale75) March 16, 2020

Microsoft Teams' outage comes at a time when firms around the world are asking their employees to work from. Teams and Slack are among the most popular collaboration tools for people working remotely.

The Verge in its report pointed out that apps like Teams are being used outside workplaces as well. It said some schools in Netherlands are asking the students to use Teams.