As Microsoft layoffs continue to cast a shadow over many operations at the company (especially Xbox, in addition to partner studios), users are reporting mass outages this morning for Outlook and Hotmail. Login issues are the primary culprit, as users are experiencing problems accessing their email or connecting to Microsoft's servers.
Several thousand users are affected as Microsoft attempts to resolve the issue as soon as possible. While email outages aren't particularly common, they're generally a high-priority item for organizations like Microsoft to address, mainly because many of their employees rely on Hotmail and Outlook for communication.
Microsoft has apparently "identified the issue" and is "continuing to deploy the fix" as many go without email this morning. The issue isn't fully widespread throughout all of Outlook and Hotmail thankfully, as many users are able to access their email without issue, especially outside of the United States.
These problems come at an inopportune time, as the United States is just waking up and starting their workday on the west coast, while some users in Europe are still working. While Microsoft has not released the full reason for the outage, some are speculating that it could be a benign engineering problem....
