Microsoft's Azure services have been fully restored following a widespread outage that affected users globally on October 29, 2025. The disruption, which began around 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time , primarily impacted Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and other cloud-based services reliant on Azure. The outage led to significant service interruptions for businesses and individual users alike, with many reporting difficulty accessing key applications and platforms.

The root cause of the issue was traced to a faulty tenant configuration deployment, which Microsoft identified as the source of the failure. After several hours of downtime, services were brought back online, and by the evening, Microsoft reported that most services had returned to normal. However, some users continued to experience intermittent issues as the system fully recovered.

The outage came just ahead of Microsoft’s quarterly earnings report, adding to the pressure as the company works to maintain investor confidence. Despite the downtime, Microsoft’s latest earnings report revealed strong growth in its Intelligent Cloud segment. CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the company’s focus on resilience and innovation, particularly highlighting the expanding use of AI features like Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Bing.

This incident serves as a reminder of the critical importance of reliable cloud services in today’s digital economy. Microsoft has committed to enhancing the resilience of its infrastructure to prevent similar outages in the future.

Sources: Reuters, Newsweek, THe Federal