Businesses using Microsoft’s cloud service report outages

Microsoft says it is confident in Office 365 service despite reports of outages

Some New Zealand businesses have been experiencing outages with Microsoft Office 365. The online version is a suite of desktop applications and versions of server products hosted in Singapore and Hong Kong.

In response to enquiries from Computerworld, Mike Ross the CEO of Wellington systems integrator, Holistec Systems, says four of his customers have experienced the outages over the past few months, one of which lasted for four hours during the business day.

Ross says Office 365 shared mail boxes also are not working.

“These are very serious problems,” he says. “We’re working with Microsoft to try to resolve them.”

He suggests the problems may be occurring because Microsoft’s focus is on servicing the demand for Office 365.

A Microsoft spokesperson was unaware of the issues.

“It’s difficult to generalise on all business issues affecting New Zealand customers because business interruptions occur for many reasons: the customer’s internet connection and ISP, their product settings, their network settings and how they have optimised for the service delivery as well as Microsoft services,” she says.

“We have confidence in our service, with a financially backed 99.9 percent up-time guarantee.”

Computerworld asked about the uptake of Office 365 in New Zealand but she says Microsoft doesn’t comment on numbers around specific products.

At the MIS100 event earlier this month, Microsoft CEO Paul Muckleston told Computerworld that Microsoft has no plans to build a datacentre closer to New Zealand than its existing facility in Singapore.