It looks like Azure is having a rough day as users in Europe reported that they could not connect to the service, starting around 9 A.M. ET. Microsoft’s Azure health dashboard did not show any issues with the platform, but Twitter is filled with users saying that they could not connect to the service. One user reported that the outage lasted for an hour.
We are not exactly sure where Azure was inaccessible, with users in France saying that they could not connect; but those in the UK were sending mixed signals about if they could access the service. While some users in the Ukraine and Denmark reported that the platform was offline for them, for those in the United States, the service never went down.
These outages are costly for Microsoft, not only financially, but in terms of their reputation. Seeing that they are trying to convince more businesses to use Azure instead of on premises hardware, their reputation for having a high degree of "up time" is a pivotal part of their pitch.
The service has returned to normal operation, but we will keep an eye on the situation to see if there are any more issues in that region.