Microsoft's Online Exchange Service Out for Hours -- Redmondmag.com

Microsoft's Online Exchange Service Out for Hours

By Jeffrey Schwartz
06/22/2011

An outage affected Microsoft's cloud-based Exchange messaging service, which went down on Wednesday across North America.

Microsoft attributed the problem to errors with the network and said it has replaced defective hardware. This latest outage appears to have lasted a few hours, but it wasn't the first time customers got hit. Customers of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite services experienced several outages during mid-May.

The service has been restored, Microsoft indicated. The outage became visible as customers began lodging complaints. Some users were having trouble sending messages, while others were unable to use the Service Health Dashboard.

"Service for the Service Health Dashboard has been restored, and customers are reporting the ability to access all services," the company announced on a Microsoft Online Services support forum tracking the incident. "Thank you for your patience during this morning's incident. We understand that any disruption in service may result in a disruption to your business, and we apologize for any inconvenience this incident caused."

Some customers were fuming on the message board, however, questioning their decision to use the cloud-based messaging service.

The outage comes less than one week before Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is set to launch Office 365, the successor to Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

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