Microsoft Azure, one of the world's leading cloud computing platforms, has experienced a major service outage, leaving customers across Europe and Africa without access to their services.
The outage began at approximately 07:40 UTC, with the main problem being traced to a significant loss of capacity in Azure Front Door (AFD), Microsoft's cloud-native Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Users reported periodic connectivity issues, which extended to an inability to access the Azure Portal itself, preventing administrators from managing their own cloud infrastructure.
See also: Vulnerability in Microsoft Events platform exposes personal data
The incident highlights the critical reliance of global businesses on the availability of cloud services and the knock-on effect of a failure in a key component like a CDN.
According to Microsoft's health status page , internal monitoring systems detected "significant capacity loss, approximately 30% of Azure Front Door instances."
This degradation was mainly concentrated in environments in Europe and Africa.
Microsoft Azure: Service outage and impacts
Azure Front Door is designed to provide a secure and scalable entry point for web applications, accelerating content delivery and improving global performance. Its failure effectively disconnected the “front door” for many services, making them inaccessible to end users even if the backend infrastructure remained operational.
See also: Malicious use of Microsoft Teams to distribute malware
Microsoft immediately acknowledged the incident through its official channels. The Azure support team confirmed an “ongoing outage” and stated that their engineering teams were actively working towards a solution.
In a more detailed statement about the impact, the company noted that it was investigating the underlying factors that may have caused the sudden loss of capacity.
By 10:14 UTC, Microsoft had ruled out any recent development as a possible cause, suggesting that the root cause may be more complex.
The company promised to provide further updates, while also working with affected customers to gather specific details.
See also: Microsoft Teams introduces multitasking mode
The outage prompted an immediate backlash from the global developer and IT, with many taking to social media to report the problems and express their frustration.
