Why Microsoft turned to Amazon, Google to tackle CrowdStrike outage issues

Microsoft

On July 18, 2024, a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered a global IT outage, impacting approximately 8.5 million Windows devices. This incident, though not directly related to Microsoft, had significant repercussions across the tech ecosystem, prompting Microsoft to take action to support affected customers.

In a blog post, Microsoft outlined the steps it took to help users across the world. One of the step was to work with Google and Amazon. Microsoft said that it collaborated with other cloud providers and stakeholders, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The idea was “to share awareness on the state of impact we are each seeing across the industry and inform ongoing conversations with CrowdStrike and customers,” said Microsoft.

The company further said that also works with Amazon and Google to “collaborate on the most effective approaches.”

“As we’ve seen over the last two days, we learn, recover and move forward most effectively when we collaborate and work together. We appreciate the cooperation and collaboration of our entire sector, and we will continue to update with learnings and next steps,” said Microsoft in the blog post.

Microsoft’s Azure platform competes with AWS and GCP in the lucrative cloud services market.

According to Microsoft’s estimates, the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines. While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services. Airlines, banks, hospitals and many other sectors were heavily impacted. Several flights across the world were delayed, cancelled.

Crowd Strike issued a fix but that was several hours after users across the world were deeply impacted.