Microsoft’s cloud services firm Azure hit with outage, says customers should see improvement soon

Microsoft Azure users may be not be able to access Office 365, Minecraft or other services due to issues with the cloud service, the tech giant said on Wednesday.

The company posted a note on its Azure status page that its teams are currently investigating issues related to its Azure Front Door service, and that customers should begin to see "initial signs of recovery" soon.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company acknowledged the issues on the page and its social media accounts.

Because so many sites and services use Microsoft's cloud service, an outage like this one can have widespread results.

Users reported issues with Office 365, Minecraft, X-Box Live, Costco and Starbucks's mobile apps and websites, Copilot and many other services on Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages.

Microsoft's Azure troubles come just over a week after a massive outage of Amazon's cloud computing service took down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.

The issues began hours before the company is set to release its quarterly earnings report.

Amazon is the dominant provider of cloud computing services but Microsoft ranks second, ahead of Google, in most markets.