Global Microsoft outage affects UvA staff, no impact on teaching
Sending emails and holding online meetings is currently difficult or impossible for UvA staff. Due to a global outage affecting Microsoft 365, the US tech company’s services are either unavailable or barely accessible. Teaching and assessments will continue as normal.
Since 5.15 pm on Thursday, Microsoft 365 has been experiencing a global outage. UvA staff are also finding services such as Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams difficult or impossible to access, reports the UvA.
“We understand that this is causing inconvenience to your work, studies or teaching,” writes the UvA on its staff portal. There, the university advises, amongst other things, not to resend important emails, as messages may still be delivered at a later time. The university also recommends storing important information and documents locally or on an available UvA storage location, whilst complying with information security guidelines.
The UvA does not expect any consequences for teaching and assessments. “Canvas is still working, so students can still be kept informed,” said the spokesperson.
According to Microsoft, the disruption was not caused by a cyberattack. The problem arose due to “increased load” on the infrastructure, as a number of servers failed, the tech company stated on X. The UvA is in contact with the software provider and is receiving indications that the services are becoming more stable. It is not yet known how long the disruption will last.
Wake-up call
Natali Helberger, a university professor of law and digital technology, had previously warned of this situation. “We are almost 90 per cent dependent on a single major American technology provider,” she said in an earlier article in Folia. “If Microsoft goes down, the whole of the UvA can go home.”
For this reason, Surf, the ICT cooperative for higher education, introduced the alternative collaboration platform Nextcloud at the start of this year. Nextcloud’s software code is open-source, meaning it is accessible to everyone, which makes Nextcloud less vulnerable to the monopoly of a single company.
“Nextcloud is currently accessible,” says Helberger on the phone. “We still mainly use it for storing documents, but you can also make video calls on it and there’s an email service too.” Nevertheless, the majority of researchers, including Helberger, still use Microsoft for their calendars and email. Helberger describes the global outage at Microsoft as a wake-up call for the university to become less dependent on large technology companies. “Although you might well ask yourself, how many more wake-up calls do we need?”
No Folia newsletter
Due to the technical fault, the Folia newsletter cannot be sent either. Depending on how the situation develops, it will be sent at a later moment.
Update: 13 November, 2.15 pm. Email and online meetings via Outlook and Teams are up and running again. According to Microsoft, “encouraging progress” is being made in Europe, reports the NOS. The UvA has announced via its staff portal that services are not expected to be fully restored by Friday.
