Microsoft Office 365 suffers first major outage

 　　SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Microsoft's cloud-based software Microsoft Office 365 on Wednesday experienced its first major outage since its introduction in late June.

　　"At approximately 11:30 a.m. PDT, Microsoft became aware of a networking issue affecting customers of some Microsoft services hosted out of one of our North American data centers," said Steven Gerri, general manager for Microsoft Global Foundation Services, in a statement

　　"We apologize for the inconvenience that Office 365 outage has caused today. We are working on resolving the issue," the software giant said via Twitter.

　　Outages were reported in Chicago, Denver and New York City among other locations. According to tweets from affected¹ users, they were unable to access their email and managers were unable to manage accounts.

　　The outage lasted approximately five hours and services have been restored for the moment.

　　According to Microsoft service-level agreement, Microsoft guarantees a 99.9 percent level of uptime. If it fails to reach 99.9 percent uptime, users are eligible² for 25 percent service credit.

　　As more industry giants try to entice³ users to move to the "cloud," a term refers to the management and provision of applications and data over the Internet, the downtime again reminds cloud computing⁴ users that they must prepare to deal with outages and rethink their dependency on the service, analysts⁵ said.

　　Amazon has suffered two major cloud outages earlier this month and back in April, impacting some of its high-profile users like movie streaming service Netflix and location-based social networking Foursquare.

　　Analysts recommend cloud users to store data with multiple service providers to minimize the risk and limit their dependency on cloud services for business-critical processes.

　　Available in 40 countries and regions since June 28, Office 365, which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said is "where Microsoft office meets the cloud," combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online into a single cloud-based package for business users.

1 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

2 eligible   

adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的

参考例句：

• He is an eligible young man.他是一个合格的年轻人。
• Helen married an eligible bachelor.海伦嫁给了一个中意的单身汉。

3 entice   

v.诱骗，引诱，怂恿

参考例句：

• Nothing will entice the children from television.没有任何东西能把孩子们从电视机前诱开。
• I don't see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land.我不明白，为什英国人要引诱我们离开自己的国土。

4 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

5 analysts   

分析家，化验员( analyst的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• City analysts forecast huge profits this year. 伦敦金融分析家预测今年的利润非常丰厚。
• I was impressed by the high calibre of the researchers and analysts. 研究人员和分析人员的高素质给我留下了深刻印象。