Over two dozen data centers operated with limited server capacity available to customers based on two current Microsoft managers and an engineer who works for a significant customer.

The server capacity at more than half a dozen Azure data centers will likely remain limited until early 2023. It included a facility in central Washington state and others in Europe and Asia.

Microsoft's struggle to fill its data centers with hardware comes after a surge in cloud demand at the outset of the pandemic.

In April 2020, CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged two years of digital transformation in two months due to the pandemic. He saw an immediate surge in demand and systemic structural changes across every solution area. The demand surge led to several minor outages of Azure services. However, it is hard to ascertain the link to the usage spike.

In December, AWS suffered its third major outage in a matter of weeks last month, affecting millions of people, Forbes reported. It led to the clients diversifying the risks by securing access to multiple cloud providers like Microsoft.

The issues vendors have experienced from cut fiber cables and changes in coding to an air system shutdown in a data center. Experts held the era of cloud computing responsible for the more frequent outages but with less severity.

Price Action: MSFT shares traded higher by 0.80% at $258.89 on the last check Friday.

Photo by Rainer Stropek via Flickr