Global outage of Microsoft impacting Orkney’s services

Local authorities and businesses across Orkney have been affected today by the global outage of Microsoft.

Microsoft 365 Services, which runs Outlook emails, Teams and AI software Copilot have all been affected by connectivity issues, which the company has claimed is not caused by a cyber-security incident.

The outage, which began on Thursday afternoon, has impacted both NHS Orkney and Orkney Islands Council (OIC), as well as the Scottish and UK Governments. 

OIC, NHS Orkney and some schools have stated that if residents need to contact them, they should do so via their phone lines until the issue is resolved.

Though phone lines are operational, they will likely be busier than normal, the authorities have advised.

A timeframe for recovery of services is not yet known.

Microsofts Service Health Status, which was updated at 2 pm, states: “We’re continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels.

“Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues.”