Widespread interruptions impacting internet services in Pforzheim region
Pforzheim, Germany, and various other cities across Germany are currently experiencing widespread IT disruptions, primarily affecting entities that rely on cloud-based applications such as Microsoft Office 365. The root cause of these outages has been traced back to ongoing issues with Microsoft's cloud services, specifically Microsoft Forms and other Microsoft 365 services.
Microsoft has acknowledged the incident and is actively working on a resolution. However, as of the latest reports, their official service health dashboard has not yet been updated to fully reflect the outage's scope. The disruption has been significant enough to interrupt workflows in education, business, and municipal operations, causing problems with email traffic, phone systems, and the unavailability of services in various departments.
The Pforzheim city administration, including the foreigner's office, the citizen's center, the pension office, and the vehicle registration office, are among the affected entities. The disruption is also causing issues for companies based in Pforzheim, as well as several airports, banks, and municipal service providers across Germany.
This incident fits within a broader trend of Microsoft cloud reliability challenges in 2025, with previous issues reported with Teams, Exchange Online, and MFA systems. While other cloud providers like Google Cloud have experienced outages earlier this year, the current event impacting Germany and surrounding countries is clearly tied to Microsoft's ongoing service disruption rather than Google or other providers.
The outages are primarily affecting entities in Germany, although they are also causing problems in other European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands. The disruption at a security solutions provider for cloud applications is believed to be the underlying cause of the global IT outages experienced today.
As the situation continues to evolve, affected entities are advised to monitor Microsoft's service health dashboard for updates on the resolution process. In the meantime, they may need to find alternative solutions to maintain essential operations and services.
The widespread IT disruptions in cities like Pforzheim, Germany, are predominantly affecting entities relying on technology such as cloud-based applications, notably Microsoft's Office 365 suite, including Microsoft Forms. The disruptions have created significant problems in both general-news sectors like education, business, and municipal operations, and are also causing issues for companies and service providers across Europe.
