Microsoft glitch halts operations for companies worldwide

A massive glitch in Microsoft cloud computing services on Thursday brought a forced halt to operations of various companies worldwide.

Downdetector, a real-time internet outage monitoring website, reported breakdowns in the applications developed by the tech giant with the US alone accounting for 1,751 of the outages.

Microsoft said the massive glitch began at about 6pm Eastern Time on Thursday with a subset of its customers experiencing issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region.

“We’re continuing to progress on our mitigation efforts for the affected Microsoft 365 apps and services,” the tech giant said on its website. “We still expect users to see remediation as we address residual impact.”

The crash disrupted banking and communications services around the globe, including India, the US and the UK, where financial institutions, airports, and media houses were unable to carry out their operations.