Microsoft’s cloud based future keeps looking shaky every time there is an outage. The technology is based on an assurance that companies can't lose data and can access it on demand.

However this morning Redmond was again in the embarrassing position of having to put its hand up to another outage. Microsoft says email services to most customers using Windows Live Hotmail and Messenger have been restored following a worldwide outage.

The software company said services are back, but warned customers could still have problems logging on to their email accounts as the changes made to the system made their way through the network, through its Windows Live blog. Microsoft’s cloud-based software Office 365 was also affected by the outage.

The speculation is that Microsoft was caught in a power blackout that hit San Diego, although we would have thought it would have had some backup servers.