Software King of the World Microsoft’s recent batch of outages might be down to the large number of staff cuts that Vole has been carrying out.
For those who came in late, on 30 July, Vole faced a major outage affecting its Azure infrastructure and Microsoft 365 services. This outage significantly disrupted services for users globally, impacting businesses and individual users reliant on Microsoft’s cloud services. The outage began at approximately 11:45 UTC and was reportedly resolved by 19:43 UTC, which means it lasted almost 8 full hours.
According to BestBrokers analyst Paul Hoffman wonders if there is a causality relationship between the outage and the fact that on June 3, Microsoft laid off hundreds of employees from its Azure cloud unit.
This decision was part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at improving operational efficiency and focusing on core business areas amid a challenging economic environment.
“The layoffs affected various roles within the Azure division, reflecting Microsoft’s strategy to streamline operations and reallocate resources to more critical areas (*cough* AI) within the company,” Hoffman said.
This was not the first and it turned out not to be the last layoffs announcement by Microsoft in 2024.
BestBroker aggregated Technology Layoffs data from the tech career platform TrueUp to find that Microsoft ranks fourth among the US tech giants that laid off the most employees in 2024.
Hoffman said that the layoffs in Microsoft’s Azure unit and the subsequent major outage may or may not have a causality relationship. However such events highlight the delicate balance tech companies must maintain between cost-cutting measures, strategic allocation of resources, and ensuring existing services’ reliability.
“While restructuring and layoffs can help companies reduce expenses and focus on strategic priorities, they can also lead to unintended consequences, such as diminished operational capacity and slower response times to technical issues,” he said.
Microsoft blamed yesterday’s outage on a DDoS attack, which flooded the network with junk requests. But then, Microsoft’s defensive measures amplified the attack, rather than mitigating it.
“We cannot help but wonder if the outcome of the attack would have been the same if Microsoft hadn’t announced laying off hundreds of Azure staff two months prior,” Hoffman said.
