Microsoft: Delta Struggled After IT Crash Because of Outdated Infrastructure

From PC Mag: Microsoft's legal team has responded to Delta Air Lines' threat of litigation in the wake of the global IT outage last month, where a faulty CrowdStrike update caused millions of Windows computers around the world to suddenly crash, displaying the blue screen of death.

Like CrowdStrike, Microsoft's legal team claims that it made repeated offers of help to Delta in the wake of the outage, but Delta ignored or refused its help. In a letter Microsoft sent to Delta on Tuesday shared by The Verge, Microsoft says its employees reached out to Delta employees every day from July 19—the day of the crash—until July 23. On July 22, a Delta employee rejected Microsoft's offer, stating: "All good."

Microsoft suggests the reason Delta declined and ignored its offers of help was because the IT systems Delta was having the most issues restarting were actually IBM systems not using Windows or Azure. "Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure," Microsoft's counsel says.

Microsoft didn't explain its findings in further detail, so it's currently unclear how exactly the outage might have had a ripple effect on machines not directly running on Windows. CrowdStrike and Microsoft have both previously confirmed that only Windows machines with CrowdStrike's products experienced the simultaneous crash July 19.

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