Microsoft disruption affects South African businesses and public institutions

A global disruption affecting Microsoft infrastructure disrupted digital operations at businesses and public institutions in South Africa after it reached the country on Thursday.

The incident affected Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365 and other services used for email, workplace applications, document storage and collaboration. Organisations reporting difficulties included power utility Eskom, domestic airline FlySafair, Absa bank, the City of Cape Town and the South African Revenue Service.

Organisations report email and application problems

Eskom said its email services were affected by the worldwide disruption to Microsoft Exchange. The utility later directed customers to telephone, WhatsApp, chatbot and USSD channels as alternative ways to communicate.

FlySafair said the disruption to Microsoft 365 temporarily prevented it from sending or receiving emails. The airline advised customers to use its call centre and WhatsApp while the problem continued.

Absa reported intermittent difficulties for some employees trying to access Microsoft workplace applications, including email and Copilot. The bank said its technology teams were monitoring the situation closely.

“Microsoft is actively working on a resolution, and our tech teams are monitoring the situation closely,” Absa said.

The City of Cape Town said its Microsoft 365 environment was affected, including email, Teams and OneDrive. The South African Revenue Service also issued an alert about the disruption to its services.

Microsoft investigates infrastructure problems

Microsoft said it was investigating elevated server loads and unexpected server unavailability. Its efforts to redirect traffic away from affected infrastructure encountered further difficulties, according to service-health updates.

The company said it was working to restore the affected infrastructure and reported early signs of stabilisation, along with improving capacity, by Friday. Microsoft also said it had extended its email timeout to 48 hours to help preserve delayed messages during the incident.

“To help preserve delayed mail through this event, we’ve extended email timeout to 48 hours,” Microsoft said in a Friday morning update.

The disruption affected a range of Microsoft productivity and cloud services, including Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Copilot. It also extended beyond South Africa, affecting businesses, government institutions and educational organisations in multiple countries.

Reliance on shared cloud services

The interruptions across organisations in different sectors highlighted the reliance on shared technology providers for everyday communications and digital operations. The organisations affected included a power utility, an airline, a bank, a local government authority and the national tax service.

Microsoft had not established a precise cause for the infrastructure failure in the available service updates, and the full number of affected organisations, users and countries was not specified. It was also not stated when all affected services would be fully restored.