Service Restored – Microsoft Azure Incident Impacting Thalamus

Dear Thalamus Community,

Earlier today, Thalamus products experienced an outage caused by a widespread Microsoft Azure incident that affected multiple services globally, including Azure Front Door, a key component of our cloud infrastructure.

According to Microsoft, the issue began around 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM ET) and was triggered by an inadvertent configuration change that resulted in significant connectivity issues—causing latencies, timeouts, and errors across systems dependent on Azure’s network. Microsoft identified the root cause and began deploying a “last known good” configuration to restore stability and re-route traffic through healthy network nodes. Microsoft reported partial resolution of services starting at approximately 20:30 UTC (4:30pm ET).

Microsoft has since confirmed that service has been fully restored as of 00:40 UTC (8:40pm ET)

On the Thalamus side

11:49 AM ET: Thalamus internal monitoring detected the issue, followed shortly thereafter by customer reports. Within minutes, our team:

• Posted a banner on our website (thalamusgme.com)
• Updated our status page and X (formerly Twitter) account per established communication protocols
• Coordinated with AAMC to post a banner on ERAS

1:00 PM ET: Thalamus sent an email communication to all customers with additional details regarding the Microsoft outage. Please note that during the first 30 minutes of this event, Microsoft had not yet acknowledged the incident publicly. Once we confirmed accurate information directly from Microsoft, our team distributed verified updates to ensure transparency and accuracy.

4:30 PM ET: Partial recovery by Microsoft resulted in some Thalamus functionality becoming available.

8:40 PM ET: Full restoration by Microsoft resulted in full and normal operations of Thalamus products.

Throughout the event, Thalamus engineering and infrastructure teams continuously monitored Microsoft’s mitigation steps and verified the restoration of Thalamus services. In parallel, our support team assisted applicants, programs, and institutional partners to address any concerns.

As an organization built by GME, for GME, we understand how critical Thalamus is during recruitment season and sincerely apologize for the disruption. While the root cause originated with Microsoft’s infrastructure, and was beyond our direct control, our teams worked diligently to ensure a smooth recovery and maintain clear communication throughout.

Please rest assured that the integrity of Thalamus systems remained fully intact during the downtime, and all emails and interview invitations were successfully sent as expected. Our team will continue to monitor system performance closely.

If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact us via the Thalamus Support Request Form.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued trust in Thalamus.

Best,

Jason

Jason Reminick, MD, MBA, MS
CEO & Founder, Thalamus