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Microsoft Exchange Online Crippled by Hours-Long Outage

Users of Microsoft's Exchange Online service in the North America region were hit by a service outage on Tuesday that reportedly lasted for about 10 hours.

Various Twitter users reported the outage throughout Tuesday. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley kept a running chronicle of the outage reports. Her sources suggested that the outage lasted until about 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

A statement from a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the Exchange Online service problem had started at about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. The spokesperson indicated that the service has since been restored:

On Tuesday, June 24th, 2014, at approximately 6:30 AM EDT, some North American customers experienced email delays with Exchange Online. The issue has since been resolved and the service is now functioning normally. We sincerely apologize to customers for any inconvenience this incident may have caused and continuously strive to improve our service and using these opportunities to drive even greater excellence in our service delivery.

Typically, Exchange Online customers would use a private portal, associated with the subscription account, to monitor a Microsoft service outage. While a Washington Post story pointed to a "service status" page that's publicly accessible, it just shows the status for some of Microsoft's consumer services, not Exchange Online. However, Foley indicated that people who had Exchange Online accounts were not seeing Tuesday's service outage reflected on their private dashboards.

People who experienced this service outage were not able to send or receive their e-mails. Microsoft attributed the problem to traffic flowing through the Exchange Online Protection service, adding that organizations with hybrid networks could also have seen delays.

At the time of problem's resolution, at around 4:30 p.m. ET, Foley herself reported receiving several delayed e-mails. She uses Office 365 Small Business edition, which includes the Exchange Online service.

"Mail flow is now improving and customers will begin to see service recovery as messages are being delivered and email queues drain," Microsoft's dashboard explained, according to Foley's account.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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