Government and public service operations in this province are being affected by a world-wide Microsoft cloud outage.
Microsoft Azure – which is used by close to 70 percent of organizations worldwide, is used to build, operate and manage apps and services.
The massive outage has created chaos, forcing flight cancellations, including delays at St. John’s International Airport.
Provincial digital platforms are also affected, as are some services provided through NL Health Services including Meditech which is used to manage patient care and finance information.
Some health care services will be affected and NL Health Services will provide updates as more information becomes available.
Local tech blogger Kevin Andrews told VOCM Open Line with Brian Callahan the outage appears to be the result of updates to Microsoft’s software.
“For some reason there was a problem with the code, and it wasn’t compatible with Windows, and as a result, Windows would crash and run into sort of a loop…and then there was no way for people to boot up their computers.”
He says software updates are often pushed out silently in the night time, and it usually doesn’t cause major problems.
“I think somebody made a blunder there, and it’s affecting a lot of people, a lot of companies, and a lot of business.”