Microsoft’s Slack Competitor Crashes in Europe Amid Remote Working Surge

Microsoft’s competitor to Slack, Microsoft Teams, went down for two hours in Europe yesterday morning as thousands of housebound Europeans attempted to use it to work from home amid the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.

Via The Verge:

Microsoft’s chat and communications tool, Microsoft Teams, went down across Europe this morning for more than two hours. The outage started just as thousands of workers started to sign into the service and attempt to work remotely amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Microsoft Teams users were experiencing issues signing into the service and sending messages, and Microsoft rectified the European issues after just over two hours.

The software giant initially issued a statement revealing that the company had “resolved an issue that may have impacted a subset of customers in Europe,” but then the service experienced issues once again as more workers around the world started accessing it at around 11:30AM ET today. The issues appear to be intermittent, and Microsoft is now monitoring the performance of Teams.

Microsoft Teams is a software tool for remote working. Much like market leader Slack, it allows workforces to create private chatgroups, as well as conduct video meetings. The tool also gives workforces shared file storage, and allows them to remotely collaborate on Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office products.

There are signs that other Microsoft products are having hiccups as they deal with increased volume amid the coronavirus pandemic. XBox Live, the online video gaming platform owned by Microsoft, went down for many gamers on Sunday, the second such outage in three days.