Musing While Microsoft’s Got Me Offline

For those not aware, Microsoft has had an outage of all of its “cloud-based” software. Outlook's crashed email and calendar are getting all the headlines, but anyone trying to use Excel, PowerPoint, Teams or anything connected to Microsoft's internet services has been out of luck. [Also: I know the more computer savvy will say, “Aktshually, on-prem resources are not … blablablabla.]

The short version is decent chunks of my ability to do my job weren’t possible for most of yesterday, and it’s not looking great for today given the messaging that Microsoft has been putting out. (And don’t believe the headline numbers. Take a look at what they’re saying is being addressed: you can surmise it’s well more than 100,000 or so users that are affected.)

Not being able to work isn’t a good feeling, at least for me anyway.

I don’t have any grand position I’m trying to argue for. While I’m enjoying all the humorous tweets and funny memes, I do think this should be seen as a warning that, you know, maybe some networks need better security, hardware, and people responsible for them. I mean, the world’s not going to end because we can’t send an email, but if it can happen to Outlook, what else can — will — it happen to next?

This is a major software outage. Over the summer it was explosive diarrhea from salads. Those were serious things that deserved serious attention, but as always it’s a few headlines and then it’s gone.

Yes, I’m sure Elizabeth Warren will shrilly scream for regulation and punishment…and then the story will fade away quietly because the next Big Scandal has passed. But I feel like this could just be a warning sign of some more serious issues we’ll be dealing with, and dealing with soon.