Microsoft Acknowledges Outlook.com, Messenger, SkyDrive Outages

[TechCrunch]

Having a hard time accessing your SkyDrive files or your email on Outlook.com? You are not alone, and Microsoft says that it is working on the issue.

The latest from Microsoft's Live.com status board (remember Live.com?) is simple: Outlook.com, SkyDrive, and the 'People' services are all on the rocks at the moment. Some, such as ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, are not impacted by the issue. My account, for whatever it is worth, is also working.

However, Microsoft has officially noted the issues, stating that users "might not be able to see all [their] email messages." And under the SkyDrive tab, it plainly notes that "services such as Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive are experiencing technical difficulties."

Microsoft promises an update by 11 this morning, so we should know more soon.

This sort of issue is somewhat pedestrian and normal, provided that it doesn't bang on for too long. So if Microsoft manages to right its server ship quickly, no worries. But if the outage continues for more than a few hours or so, it undermines Microsoft's cloud premise that users should turn to hosted services over on-premise or on-desktop solutions.

Microsoft has put SkyDrive into an increasingly important position in the Windows environment, boosting its integration points in Windows 8.1 over an already intertwined Windows 8 experience. To have it go down is subpar.

For live updates on the status, head here. In the meantime, this will make you smile.

Top Image Credit: Todd Bishop



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