Microsoft’s Outlook.com email service suffered a massive 16-hour outage Wednesday, which saw users unable to access parts of SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Outlook, too. Microsoft has revealed that it was a result of a mischievous firmware upgrade—which caused “a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the datacenter”. It’s quite an unusual situation for a large-volume, high-profile web service. Indeed, it required more than just a few code tweaks to solve, too: “Based on the failure scenario, there was a mix of infrastructure software and human intervention that was needed to bring the core infrastructure back online. Requiring this kind of human intervention is not the norm for our services and added significant time to the restoration.” Exactly what that human intervention was Microsoft doesn’t reveal.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.