CHICAGO (WLS) — As many employees wrapped up the work week catching up on emails, businesses continued dealing with the effects of a global Microsoft email outage that disrupted communications and highlighted the risks of relying heavily on a single platform.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
At Italian Village Restaurants, staff held an in-person meeting Friday to ensure projects remained on track after a day of lost email access.
“Yeah, it was frustrating. Yeah, I mean, when you have to kind of audible when you’re dealing with a you know multi-unit restaurant with a lot of moving pieces, you need to trust the systems,” said Jared Gelband, beverage director for Italian Village Restaurants.
Italian Village Restaurants was among millions of customers affected by the outage.
Microsoft apologized and said service was being restored. In a public statement, the company said: “This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change.”
RELATED | Microsoft outage live updates: What to know as service is being restored
The outage came at a particularly busy time for Italian Village Restaurants as the company manages special orders for upcoming holiday parties.
“Time is money. So when we have to shift things and move things around, we lose money, and that’s just the way it works: labor, time,” Gelband said.
The disruption also served as a reminder of the need for contingency plans when communication systems fail.
“At a very basic level, do we have contact information for key employees, key vendors, suppliers that are offline? If I was dependent on Microsoft today or any provider in the future, and now all that information is stored there, if that becomes unavailable, how do I access that information?” said John Kampas, founder and CEO of Empist.
Kampas and his team were conducting training for business owners when the outage disrupted their scheduling system. He said organizations should maintain backup communication methods and prepare for future disruptions as businesses become increasingly dependent on interconnected digital infrastructure.
“We don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it will happen. Do you have the proper backups in place? Do you have backups offline so that you’re not dependent on this provider? Yes, today it’s a two-day outage. But what if it was a week outage? What if it was a month outage?” Kampas said.
Kampas also urged workers and businesses to be cautious as they work through a backlog of emails. He warned that cybercriminals may attempt to exploit the widespread disruption, potentially creating additional cybersecurity risks for organizations already dealing with the outage’s impact.
Copyright © 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.
