Microsoft enterprise customers from all over the world were unable to access a variety of services when Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud-computing services platform, plunged into five hours of update on Monday.
Azure provides online applications and resources for businesses and governments. It is Microsoft's answer to other cloud-based platforms offered by its biggest rivals Amazon and Google. The Azure service disruption, which Microsoft says has affected "a small subset of customers," has affected majority of the service components, including Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Mobile Services, Websites, Service Bus, HDInsight, Site Recovery and StorSimple. The interruption, Microsoft says, was caused by multiple problems in multiple data centers happening at once.
As of 9:46 p.m. Eastern Time, the Azure website notes that "Azure core platform components are working properly," with the service interruption now causing "limited impact" in clients in Northern Europe using Microsoft's Websites.
"Starting around 18 Aug, 2014 22:00 UTC a small subset of customers using Websites in North Europe may experience intermittent connectivity issue to their Websites," writes Microsoft stated. "We are currently evaluating options to improve connectivity."
This isn't the first time Azure users went through a major outage. Last week on Tuesday, Microsoft customers in South Brazil experienced service interruptions with their Network Infrastructure while Eastern U.S. clients had connectivity issues with Azure's Cloud Services on the same day. This was followed by problems logging in to Microsoft's Visual Online Studio on Thursday, which was experienced in multiple regions. On Friday, Aug. 15, Japan saw a full service interruption with clients unable to access any of the Azure services, while management portal and cloud services were unavailable in other unspecified regions.
This certainly isn't good news for Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, who has been pushing for a major shift from PC-based services into the cloud to accommodate multiple platforms and keep the company relevant. Azure comprises a huge part of Nadella's strategy to bring people into the cloud while having the same Microsoft experience using different devices. Last month, Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood told Bloomberg that Microsoft earns a total of $4.4 billion in yearly revenue from Azure, which could be why Nadella is serious about pushing Azure to customers.
Just earlier this month, Nadella participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and drenched himself in a bucket of ice-cold water to help raise awareness for Lou Gehrig's disease. He then challenged Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Google head honcho Larry Page to do the same.
"Oh man, oh my god that is cold! Now let me challenge Jeff Bezos and Larry Page," Nadella says while soaking wet in ice-cold water. "From personal experience, I can say it's better to have your head in the clouds than in a bucket of ice."
