Microsoft apologises for cloud outage

Microsoft’s US cloud service was struck down earlier this week after a local performance issue with its data center took the service offline for around two hours.

According to Reuters, access to various Microsoft hosted software products for businesses in North America was affected. Things went dark for “more than two hours” and the outage was said to have impacted some customers in North America who experienced intermittent access.

In a statement, Microsoft said, “The outage was caused by a network issue that is now fully resolved, and service has returned to normal. During the duration of the issue, customers were updated regularly via our normal communication channels. We sincerely apologise to our customers for any inconvenience this incident may have caused them."

Even though cloud computing is on the rise, news of the outage will do little to convert those businesses still to place their data (and trust) in the service.

It was recently claimed in an IT Risk study that nearly half of Oceania IT professionals believe the risks of cloud computing outweigh the benefits.

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