We have received many reports from our users that they are receiving bounce back messages indicating that their outbound email messages are being delayed. In researching the issue, we found that all of the delayed messages sitting in our queue are being sent to users who are using Microsoft’s Outlook 365 service. The error codes on the bounce indicate: “4.4.1 421 4.3.2 The maximum number of concurrent connections has exceeded a limit, closing transmission channel”

Big Mountain hosts our email service using our own servers running Kerio Connect. We are not experiencing any disruptions. However, any outbound message from our users to a Microsoft user is being delayed. These delayed messages are being placed back in our queue for another delivery attempt at a later time.

Here is an article published today from The Washington Post:

Microsoft Outlook outage reported at businesses across much of the country

BY HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA June 24 at 12:54 PM

(Mark Lennihan/AP)
Microsoft users at businesses across the country are reporting a widespread, ongoing outage of Outlook, Office 365 and other Microsoft services. The service disruptions have lasted for much of the day.

Calls to Microsoft asking about the scale and scope of the outage were not immediately returned. The company has responded to some consumers on its Twitter feed for Office365, acknowledging the outage and saying that it is due to problems with the its Exchange Online service, which many offices use to run their e-mail, calendar and contacts services.

“Engineers are actively working on a solution to remediate impact,” the company said on its help forum page.

According to Microsoft’s service dashboard, all systems are running normally. But many people have taken to social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to complain that they have been unable to send or receive e-mail for several hours.

Microsoft Outlook may not be the e-mail service of choice for many individuals, but it has long dominated the business world, and been the product of choice for businesses looking to serve an estimated 50 million employees using cloud-based office products. Yet Microsoft has had to fend off challenges from Google and its Google Docs suite of office programs, and the pressure to compete effectively in the cloud has only increased as the market for desktop computers slides across the globe. Microsoft has reported that 58 percent of all its global revenue comes from business users, but as of 2012, analysts estimated that Google had eaten between one-third and one-half of the cloud e-mail market for businesses.

Microsoft has been focused on improving its cloud services. That’s one reason many believe that its new chief executive, Satya Nadella, formerly the leader of the enterprise and services group, was tapped to lead the company earlier this year.

The latest outage follows a widespread service disruption of Lync, Microsoft’s online communications service, on Monday. The company said that the Lync outage was caused by “network routing infrastructure” issues in a statement to ZDNet Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley.

Click here for a direct link to the article.

If you are a Big Mountain client and received a bounce message indicating your message was delayed or if you have any general questions about this disruption, please contact us online or by phone at: 866-910-1070. Thank you.