Workday outage disrupts services for thousands of companies

Workday, whose software is used for payroll and human resources by thousands of companies, experienced a major outage Friday. The disruption came just days after Microsoft faced a widespread service shutdown.

The platform serves about 11,500 companies. Users trying to sign in were told Workday was unavailable because of a service interruption, and that the company was working to restore access as quickly as possible. Customers needing help were advised to contact their organization’s Workday administrator.

Major retailers such as Walmart and Target could be affected. Workday’s customers also include Netflix, Salesforce, PNC Bank, Chipotle, Southwest Airlines, General Electric and Nasdaq.

The platform is used by government organizations, too, including the cities of Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Charlotte and Denver, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is also listed as a customer.

Reports of problems rose sharply Friday afternoon, with nearly 3,000 issues recorded shortly after 5 p.m. Workday said some customers were experiencing a disruption and that its teams were working urgently to investigate and fix it. The company apologized for the difficulties but did not provide an estimate for when service would return.

Workday said the outage began after it discovered an issue while testing its backup systems.

The incident follows a major Microsoft outage that disrupted Outlook and Teams for users around the world.