Microsoft Teams goes down as coronavirus forces millions to work from home

Popular remote working platform suffers major outage

Businesses across the Asia, Europe and the US have advised employees to work from home (Joe Giddens AP)

Microsoft Teams has suffered a major outage after millions of workers were forced to work remotely due to Covid-19 coronavirus containment measures.

The remote working platform, which is part of Office 365, experienced issues across Europe on Monday, where many businesses have told employees to work from home when possible.

"We're investigating messaging-related functionality problems within Microsoft Teams," the tech giant said.

The issue appears to stem from the huge influx of new users, which typically has around 20 million daily users around the world.

The platform recently lifted restrictions on the free version, as well as extended the month-long free trial for the premium version to six months.

Other remote working apps and tools suffered similar issues, with online video conferencing service Zoom experiencing an outage earlier on Monday.

It is the second major outage to hit Microsoft Teams this year, following a three-hour shut down last month due to an unrenewed security certificate.

Microsoft's Xbox Live platform also went down briefly on Sunday, most likely as a result of an increase in demand.