Emails stopped, meetings stopped and a big impact on business… Has the world become too dependent on Microsoft?

In today’s digital age, most businesses around the world have become dependent on the Internet. Important work like email, online meeting, documents and data storage of companies have started to be done through the Internet. Microsoft is a big name in the platforms through which companies do this work. But on November 12, due to a glitch in many of the company’s services, users around the world faced difficulties. Issues from Outlook to Teams and Microsoft 365 have shown how big of an impact it can have on businesses around the world if a major tech company’s system goes down.

Due to this problem in Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams, users could neither send emails properly nor hold online meetings. Many people also faced difficulty in opening important files. The problem continued for more than five hours. Microsoft said that during high pressure, some of its servers suddenly became unavailable. According to a Reuters report, some services from OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected.

More than 45 million users use Microsoft 365

Today, Microsoft is not just a company that makes software for companies. A large number of businesses around the world run on its platform. Microsoft 365 has more than 45 million enterprise users. Emails are sent from Outlook, meetings are held on Teams and important documents are kept on SharePoint and OneDrive. Word and Excel are used in almost every office. When companies manage their data and digital services through Azure.

The advantage of having multiple functions managed by a single company is that employees do not need to use different platforms. But there is another side to it. If there is a major fault in this system, it can affect multiple functions simultaneously. This was seen in the November 12 incident.

Along with companies, government operations have also been affected

This time the problem affected many businesses. Electric truck maker Workhorse Group had to postpone its earnings announcement. There were also reports that government operations were affected in Japan and Australia. According to a Reuters report, work related to intelligence agencies and police in Australia was also affected. This is not the first time this has happened. Services such as Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and OneDrive were also affected due to networking issues in January 2023. Users in many countries including India, Japan, Australia and Britain faced issues. Even in January 2024, the team’s services were affected in several areas.

The Azure bug in October 2025 also put companies in trouble. Meanwhile, operations at Alaska Airlines and Heathrow Airport were also affected. Alaska Airlines said its IT systems would be examined following the incident.

What other option do companies have?

After such incidents come to light again and again, there may be talk of staying away from Microsoft’s services, but actually doing so is not easy. Companies have designed a large part of their work around these services. Changing them abruptly will take both time and money.

In such a situation, the best way is that companies should not depend only on one tech company. Keep a separate backup of important data and also have the option of other cloud services ready. Some arrangements should also be made for email and meetings. Also, it is important to check from time to time whether the backup will actually work when the main system is down.