"Shout out to an early Friday finish": CrowdStrike BSOD and chaotic outages are a blessing in disguise for some workers

What you need to know

• Microsoft services have been impacted by a global outage, reportedly caused by bugs affecting Crowdstrike.
• Microsoft says it has fixed its Azure servers and that its services should be restored soon.
• Corporate employees have shared their joy about taking a "breather" from work during the outage throughout social media.

Earlier today, reports surfaced across social media platforms citing an outage affecting Microsoft, including its computing and networking services across the US. This has left its customers between a rock and a hard place.

Microsoft is investigating the issue, but cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is reportedly to blame for the global outage. The Redmond giant has seemingly repaired its Azure servers and says its Microsoft 365 services will be restored gradually. In the interim, "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts."

While experts refer to the issue as the "biggest IT outage the world has ever seen," not everyone is upset about it. Before I clocked in at work, a friend sent me an iMessage with an image attachment of a Blue-Screen-of-Death (BSOD) and asked me whether I'd faced a similar challenge. 

My first thought was to check X (formerly Twitter) for any updates on the issue. Instantly, a message from my colleague popped up in my notifications, confirming that Microsoft services were facing a global outage. Windows and CloudStrike were also trending on my X timeline. 

But what's CloudStrike? It's a "is a cybersecurity company based in the US. Its main focus is helping companies manage their Internet security, including protecting them from data breaches and sophisticated attacks deployed by hackers."

While the global outage persists, employees across various organizations using Microsoft services have gotten a free pass from work (at least until the services are restored) and potentially a 3-day weekend. The same friend who alerted me about the outage just called to ask if we could hop onto our weekly EA FC 2024 tournament on Xbox a bit earlier today. However, it's unlikely that online gaming is available. 

Billionaire and X owner (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk also used the opportunity to throw jabs at Microsoft while referring to the global outage as the "Biggest IT fail ever." He also gloated about X remaining fully functional despite the outage affecting Microsoft’s services.

While most employees leveraging Microsoft services across most sectors are taking it easy, international airports are issuing hand-written boarding passes to travelers. The outage has negatively impacted traveling schedules.

For IT workers, it could mean dropping weekend plans and having their heads buried in computer screens for the next 72 hours, trying to figure out the cause of the outage and working on a fix.

On the other hand, the global outage of Microsoft services has been well-received by journalists.

Linux users are using the global outage to throw jabs at Microsoft services users. Microsoft's Windows currently holds a huge chunk of the operating market share compared to Linux. However, the Redmond giant's aggressive ad campaigns in Windows 11 coupled with its stringent system requirements for the OS, causing multiple users to transition to Linux.

Some of our readers have also had pretty interesting insight and opinions about the global outage. With one sharing an image on our X account indicating, "Hackers need to step up their game and delete everyone's loans, bad credit, and mortgages."

Another user correlated the outage to Microsoft disbanding its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team. "Maybe just reinstate the DEI department, see if that works?" the user added.

This is a developing story and we're keeping tabs on it. Keep tabs on our coverage for new updates, statements, and more.