Microsoft's Azure cloud platform experienced a major outage on October 29, 2025, affecting services like Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Minecraft starting around noon Eastern time. The company attributed the disruption to an inadvertent configuration change. This incident marks the second significant cloud failure in less than two weeks, underscoring vulnerabilities in the digital infrastructure.
The outage began at approximately noon Eastern time on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, impacting Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, widely used Microsoft 365 services, Xbox, and Minecraft. Microsoft stated that the issue stemmed from "an inadvertent configuration change," leading to widespread downtime for users globally.
This event follows closely on the heels of another major cloud provider outage, highlighting the "brittleness" of a digital ecosystem reliant on a handful of tech giants. As noted in reports, the internet's infrastructure, dominated by companies like Microsoft and Amazon, faces inherent instability when errors occur.
Services began recovering later in the day, with Microsoft working to restore full functionality. The disruption affected enterprise users, gamers, and productivity tools, demonstrating the broad reach of Azure's ecosystem. No specific timeline for complete resolution was provided in initial statements, but the incident serves as a reminder of the risks in centralized cloud dependencies.
Keywords associated with the event include Microsoft, cloud computing, enterprise, infrastructure, and platforms, reflecting its significance in the tech sector.