Microsoft outage disrupts Hong Kong firms, lawmaker urges backup plans
A global Microsoft outage lasting several hours disrupted Hong Kong businesses, affecting communication and order processing, according to the Hong Kong Shippers Council. Lawmaker Choy Kwok-chun calls for organisations to adopt backup systems to prevent service paralysis.
A large-scale outage of multiple Microsoft services lasting several hours has affected a wide range of users in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Shippers Council said on 13 November.
Peter Hui, chairman of the Hong Kong Shippers Council, said many industry insiders, including companies in manufacturing and logistics, reported being affected. The main impact was on communications, such as order taking and progress confirmation, which suffered varying degrees of disruption. While business has not come to a halt, Hui said the communication delays have caused losses of varying severity.
Legislative Council member Choy Kwok-chun said many institutions, enterprises and even schools worldwide use Microsoft systems for email or office software, and those running newer versions of the software may have been affected. He noted that the Legislative Council's email system, which also uses Microsoft services, was temporarily unavailable but that a separate backup system ensured communications were not interrupted.
Choy said the incident shows that all organisations and government public facilities should prepare backup plans and not rely on a single system. Otherwise, services could be forced to stop and take a long time to restore.