Microsoft says it's investigating an issue that is keeping customers worldwide from connecting to its Microsoft 365 services and its cloud platform Azure.

According to Downdetector, an online outage tracker, the number of reports related to Microsoft services surged to more than 200 just before 9 a.m. ET. They had dipped back down by early afternoon. Customers reported issues with Microsoft logins, the company's Outlook platform and its website.

The company said an unexpected "usage spike" of its Azure cloud service had led to intermittent errors and timeout messages.

Microsoft said it had monitored some improvements to service access but that it was still investigating services and regions where the problems persist.

On a page dedicated to service updates, the company wrote that users who are able to access Microsoft 365 platforms "may experience latency or degraded feature performance."

It said impacted services include its Microsoft 365 admin centre, cloud services Intune and Entra, and its coding tool collection Power Platform. Its initial investigation found that collaborative software such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online aren't affected.

The issue began at 11:45 a.m. UTC/7:45 a.m. ET, according to the company. Its website shows that the issues are affecting its networks around the world, including in Canada.

Azure, which is Microsoft's brand for cloud services, is a "giant in the industry," said Carmi Levy, a technology analyst based in London, Ont.

It's the technology that underpins most of Microsoft's own services, including Office 365, Teams, Bing and Xbox, he added.

"The sad fact of technology in 2024 is any company on any day can have an outage. Microsoft is no exception," Levy said, although he stressed that the outage wasn't a repeat of the recent CrowdStrike outage.

He said that while the outage isn't a cyberattack, cybercriminals still take advantage of major outages like the one that Microsoft is reporting by emailing, texting and direct messaging potential customers through social media.

The messages might urge users to click a link to restore any services that were impacted by the outage. "And of course, do not click that link because that will get you into trouble," Levy said.

CBC News reached out to Microsoft for more information. A spokesperson for the company wrote in response that "we are investigating reports of issues connecting to our services. More details will be provided as they become available on the Azure status page."

The company is announcing its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. ET.