Pentagon Exposed by Microsoft Outage After $9.7B Software Deal - Newsweek
A global Microsoft outage disrupted businesses, health services, and government operations worldwide for more than 18 hours, prompting questions over whether the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) was affected just months after signing a multi-billion-dollar technology contract.
The Pentagon has not confirmed whether any of its operations or communications have been disrupted by the software failures, which knocked out widely used tools such as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot. A Pentagon official told Newsweek on Friday morning that the department does not comment on the status of its networks or systems.
The DOD has used Microsoft products for years, making the company a major technology contractor for the U.S. government and the military.
In May, the Pentagon said it would save roughly $422 million annually over five years for Microsoft services as part of a $9.7 billion deal with Dell Federal Systems. At the time, the department's chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the agreement would provide "critical" Microsoft services.
The deal brought together Microsoft software largely already used by the DOD, the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. Coast Guard under one agreement.
The outage began shortly before 1 p.m. ET Thursday, when Microsoft reported that users were struggling to access mailboxes in the U.S. and abroad. Within minutes, the company confirmed the issue was global.
Australia's federal police and spy agency were impacted, although the extent of the disruption to services isn't clear. Indian airlines IndiGo and Air India also said they had been impacted by the outage. Microsoft said the outage was not the result of a cyberattack, instead pointing to failing automated server health checks and elevated processor usage.
By Friday morning, Microsoft reported signs of recovery. At approximately 7 a.m. ET, the company said it was seeing "encouraging recovery progress" while warning some users would still "experience intermittent issues."
A previous update from the company said its efforts had secured "partial recovery" of services in some regions, but they weren't "sustained" fixes. In a statement, the company had earlier said the "actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief."
By 9 a.m. ET, Microsoft said it had made further "improvements," with email queues "approaching normal levels."
Meanwhile, the technical meltdown comes less than three weeks after the tech giant offered a "Voluntary Exit Offer" to roughly 60,000 eligible employees. That is approximately 27 percent of its 223,000-strong global workforce, across the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, and India.
Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Ben Kelly and Anthony Murray.
