Microsoft faced severe outage across its platforms — 365, Outlook and Teams — as thousands of users across the globe, including India, on Friday morning were unable to access its services.

There were more than 1 lakh incidents of people reporting issues with Outlook at outage-tracking website downdetector.com.

The disruption also hit connectors used by OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s AI services.

“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” Microsoft said in a statement, adding that it was providing updates in its admin center.

In its latest update, Microsoft attributed this incident to “a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable,” for reasons it did not explain.

Microsoft said it continues to investigate the outage.

In a post on X for users who can’t access the admin center, Microsoft said some of its infrastructure was experiencing “elevated load,” and that it was “redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load.”

Its team has paused all deployments, is moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and is restarting affected servers to return them to service, the tech company said.

The company says its Defender XDR security system is also affected by the outage.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft said it had fixed a Teams disruption affecting users in North America and that the impact had been fully resolved.

The company later said the issue may also affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in other regions.

Microsoft faced a major outage in September, when a days-long outage hit Microsoft 365, its online productivity suite that includes Outlook.

The company had blamed a “core authentication configuration” issue that prevented users from accessing the service.

Domestic equity benchmarks opened lower on Friday and extended losses in early trade, tracking weak global cues and profit-booking after the sharp November rally.

Sensex declined about 450 points or 0.55 per cent to 81,457.74 in early deals, while Nifty fell 182 points or 0.71 per cent to 25,117.

Earlier, the Sensex opened at 81,833.78, down 77.23 points or 0.09 per cent, while the 50-scrip basket started the session at 25,209.85, down 89.50 points or 0.35 per cent.

Sectoral indices were also largely in the red zone, in which Nifty Realty led the fall, down over 1 per cent.

Meanwhile, Nifty Chemicals, Nifty Auto and Nifty Cement declined by up to 1 per cent. Nifty Oil & Gas, Nifty Private Bank, Nifty Consumer Durables and Nifty PSU Bank also traded lower.

On the other hand, healthcare and pharmaceuticals shares were trading higher. Nifty Pharma, Nifty Healthcare and Nifty 500 Healthcare surged up to 0.39 per cent.

However, the selling came after Nifty’s spectacular 9.7 per cent rally so far in November.

According to the market experts, the most important trigger for the swift rally was the aggressive comeback of the FIIs assisted by the weakening of the AI trade and improving earnings growth in India.

“Indications are that the FII buying will continue taking the monthly inflows easily to above Rs 1 lakh crore, which will be a record high. With this kind of aggressive FII buying, the bears will be on the back foot,” the market experts said.

They further noted that there are headwinds emerging that can spoil the party. Rising inflation in the US and India means a rising interest rate scenario which can turn out to be adverse for equity markets.

“In the US two rate hikes are likely in December and January. With the October CPI inflation in India rising to 6.09 per cent, the RBI will have to raise rates at least by 25 bp each in December and February. These concerns along with the ongoing DII profit booking can apply brakes on the rally, in the near term,” they added.

Additionally, Brent crude jumped to $95 per barrel amid fresh geopolitical concerns involving Saudi energy infrastructure and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz.

In Asia, markets showed a mixed trend. Japan’s Nikkei traded about 1 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and South Korea’s KOSPI were up to 1 per cent down.

Overnight in the US, Wall Street ended lower on Thursday with the S&P 500 down 0.35 per cent and the Nasdaq down 0.39 per cent.

A passenger was apprehended and handed over to the airport police after allegedly being linked to a hoax hijack threat targeting an Air India flight from Kolkata to Mumbai, officials said on Thursday.

According to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the action followed an incident on Wednesday involving Air India flight AI 2772 after a handwritten threat note was found inside the aircraft’s lavatory shortly before its scheduled departure.

The note, which warned that the aircraft would be hijacked at 11.10 a.m., was discovered by a cabin crew member at around 10.37 a.m. The alert immediately triggered standard security protocols, prompting authorities to initiate a comprehensive security response.

As part of the precautionary measures, all 105 passengers on board were deboarded and the aircraft was moved to an isolation bay for detailed inspection and security checks. Multiple security agencies conducted mandatory screening procedures to ensure the safety of passengers and crew.

The flight, originally scheduled to depart at around 10.30 a.m., remained grounded for several hours while security personnel completed the required checks. After authorities found no credible threat, the warning was declared a hoax.

The aircraft was subsequently cleared for operations and departed for Mumbai at 5.38 p.m.

AAI said the passenger linked to the incident was later handed over to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport Police Station for further investigation. Authorities have launched a probe into the matter and are examining the circumstances surrounding the threat note.

Meanwhile, last month, an Air India flight from Frankfurt to Delhi made an emergency landing in Jaipur after reportedly transmitting Squawk 7500, the international code used to indicate a hijacking.

Reports claim that the alert was received by Ahmedabad Air Traffic Control (ATC), following which the aircraft landed safely in Jaipur. Further details about the circumstances that triggered the alert were not immediately available.

Squawk 7500 is an internationally recognised aviation transponder code that pilots use to discreetly alert air traffic control to a hijacking or unlawful interference with an aircraft.