Leap year bug shuts down Azure for a while

Microsoft can handle the task of equipping most of the world’s computers with Windows, it can handle building an Xbox, it even navigated pretty smoothly through Y2K*, but it couldn’t handle Leap Day. Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing system was down for several hours yesterday because the once-every-four-years day had not been accounted for or something was hinky in the process.

Okay, I don’t want to blame all of Microsoft for one bug, it was just something went wrong in one department, but it was enough to screw up many businesses and even local governments who rely on Azure. Screw ups like this are what make people nervous about relying on cloud computing in the first place although any locally administered network could have had the same problem.

* I think this is the first mention of Y2K in my 22-month history of hosting Tech Report.