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Microsoft Corp. reported Saturday that users of its Azure cloud platform are experiencing increased latency following the severing of multiple undersea fiber optic cables in the Red Sea.
The disruption is impacting traffic that passes through the Middle East and originates or terminates in Asian or European regions, Microsoft said in a service health status update. The company's engineering teams are actively working to mitigate the effects of the cable damage.
Microsoft did not specify how the underwater cables were cut or provide details about the cause of the damage. The company has rerouted Azure traffic through alternative pathways, but this has resulted in higher-than-normal latencies for users of the world's second-largest cloud service provider after Amazon's AWS.
"Undersea fiber cuts can take time to repair, as such we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimize routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime," Microsoft stated in its update. The company committed to providing daily updates or more frequent communications if conditions change.
The Azure platform serves businesses and organizations worldwide with cloud computing services including data storage, networking, and software applications. The Red Sea disruption highlights the vulnerability of global internet infrastructure that relies on undersea cables to carry international data traffic.
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