Quarantined Gamers Are Straining Microsoft Azure-powered Blockchain Platform

Microsoft has admitted that quarantine has forced gamers on its Azure cloud platform which is a foundation of the company’s Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering.

In the SEC filing, Microsoft notes the impact of “the global health pandemic” on its Azure cloud services. The company agrees that in some regions “deployments for some compute resource types (…) drop below our typical 99.99 percent success rates”. Moreover, Microsoft states that “Xbox Live [is] putting a strain on overall Azure capacity”:

“As a result of the surge in use over the last week, we have experienced significant demand in some regions (Europe North, Europe West, UK South, France Central, Asia East, India South, Brazil South) and are observing deployments for some compute resource types in these regions drop below our typical 99.99 percent success rates.”

However, Microsoft has not been made to shift its prioritizaton criteria to Azure and blockchain, still keeping the primary focus on emergency services.

A Microsoft representative said that the company has “nothing to share beyond the Microsoft Azure blog”.

Blockchain service offered by Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure users can deploy a blockchain network, including Bitcoin (BTC), in the cloud without the need of investing in their own hardware infrastructure. Some of its clients are GE Aviation, JPMorgan, and its own Xbox.

In the meantime, the demand for the Bitcoin network is at the lowest point since “crypto winter”.