Is Microsoft still having Windows Live outage problems or not?
After a full day of downtime for many Windows Live users on February 26 -- an outage the reasons for which Microsoft has declined to explain, but claimed was resolved on February 26 -- some users still seem to have been having ongoing service-access problems.
According to a Times Online story on February 28, a number of Microsoft's Hotmail, Live Messenger and other users were still unable to access their accounts. A widespread outage hit users across the globe of Microsoft's Web mail, instant-messaging, photo-sharing and other services on Tuesday.
I asked Microsoft officials for another update. Late on February 28, I received the following update attributable to Samantha McManus, Windows Live product manager (who all of us bloggers/press folks have been quoting this week, but to whom none of us, I'd venture, has actually spoken):
"Two unrelated network problems this week have caused some customers to have difficulty accessing Windows Live services. The first issue lasted for a few hours time on Tuesday and caused some customers worldwide to have difficulty logging into any of their accounts using a Live ID. A second unrelated issue occurred shortly after the first was resolved and specifically impacted a small set of customers’ access to Windows Live Hotmail. We have now identified and addressed both issues and customers should now be able to access their services once again.
"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption these issues may have caused for our customers. Our customers have come to expect a high level of service reliability in their experience with Windows Live and we are using the information determined through our investigation of these issues to further strengthen our environment to continue to deliver for our global Online Services customers in the future."
I'm still getting e-mail messages from individuals who've said they are continuing to have problems accessing Office services. I asked whether Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workstation were affected by this week's outage and received no update on that query.
Anyone out there still having Windows Live/Office Live or any other Live service access problems?
(Thanks to LiveSide.Net for the pointer to the Times Online outage story.)