India, Nov. 13 -- For Kriti, a Gurugram-based marketing professional, Thursday's workday came to an abrupt halt even before it began, as Microsoft services went down globally.

With her company relying heavily on Outlook for official sign-offs, the outage stalled its approval pipeline, forcing employees to turn to alternative communication channels and negotiate deadline extensions to keep work moving.

"With Outlook inaccessible since morning, external communication has been stalled, delaying roughly half a day's worth of urgent approvals and project rollouts," she said.

Kriti's experience reflects a wider disruption across enterprises and individuals in India and globally. Microsoft Outlook/Office 365 is used at companies such as Infos...