Microsoft Outage Today: Why Are Azure, 365, and Teams Down Across the U.S.?

Microsoft users across the United States faced major disruptions on Wednesday as several of the company’s core services, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Teams, and the Microsoft Store, went down. The outage primarily affected users in the Eastern United States, with reports of failures beginning around 4 p.m. UTC.

The issue caused widespread frustration among users who depend on Microsoft’s cloud and productivity tools for daily operations. Downdetector recorded more than 16,600 outage reports for Azure and over 9,000 for Microsoft 365. Microsoft confirmed the disruption was linked to a DNS-related issue affecting Azure Front Door services.

Microsoft Confirms Azure Outage and Investigates DNS Failure

In an official post on its Azure Support account on X, Microsoft stated: “We’re investigating an issue impacting Azure Front Door services. Customers may experience intermittent request failures or latency. Updates will be provided shortly.” The company later clarified that the problems began around 16:00 UTC due to DNS issues that led to degraded service availability across several platforms.

Microsoft assured users that it had taken initial actions to mitigate the problem and restore access to the Azure Portal. “We are actively investigating the underlying issue and additional mitigation actions,” the company said. Despite partial recovery efforts, users continued reporting disruptions in accessing Microsoft 365 admin portals, Teams chats, and Entra ID authentication services through the evening.

The Azure status page briefly displayed “There are currently no active events,” which led to confusion among users still experiencing service interruptions. The company later confirmed that the issue was localized to the East US region and not a global outage.

Users Report Problems With Microsoft 365, Entra, and Azure Services

Social media platforms were flooded with complaints as users shared their experiences with downtime. One user posted, “It’s broader than just Azure Front Door. Every service in our stack appears impacted—including O365 apps and Entra.” Another wrote, “Not just front door. Can’t access M365 admin portals, Azure admin portal, etc.”

Some users noted that only Linux-based systems remained operational, suggesting the issue may have affected Windows authentication services more severely. The outage has renewed discussions about redundancy and dependency on large-scale cloud providers for enterprise systems.

Potential Business and Operational Impact

Wednesday’s Microsoft outage underscored how dependent global businesses have become on cloud infrastructure. Organizations relying on Azure-hosted servers faced temporary downtime for web apps, customer portals, and internal communication systems. For small businesses and remote teams, the disruption of Microsoft Teams and Outlook compounded productivity losses.

While Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud dominate the global cloud market, incidents like this highlight the fragility of even the largest systems. Experts noted that the incident could trigger renewed calls for diversification across multiple cloud providers.

As of late Wednesday, Microsoft reported that service recovery was underway but warned users of possible latency and intermittent access. The company is expected to release a detailed post-incident report once the root cause is fully identified.

FYI (keeping you in the loop)-

Q1: What caused the Microsoft outage today?

The outage stemmed from DNS issues within Azure Front Door services, which caused service degradation across Microsoft’s platforms including 365 and Teams.

Q2: Which regions were most affected by the Azure outage?

The outage primarily impacted users in the Eastern United States, though some users in Europe also reported latency issues.

Q3: Are Microsoft 365 and Teams back online?

As of late Wednesday, services were being gradually restored, though users still reported intermittent access and slow performance.

Q4: Has Microsoft confirmed the root cause?

Microsoft attributed the outage to DNS problems but is still investigating the root cause to prevent future recurrences.

Q5: Is this outage related to a cyberattack?

There is no evidence of a cyberattack. Microsoft has not reported any security breach and confirmed the issue was internal to its cloud infrastructure