Mimecast Reports ‘Major Power Outage’ In US Data Center

The U.K.-based provider of email management says a power outage in one of its U.S. data centers is causing a disruption in service.

Mimecast, the U.K.-based provider of email management with a focus on security, says a “major power outage” is causing its North American grid to suffer problems causing delays and “degraded service” for customers.

“We can confirm we experienced a major power outage in one of our US data centers that impacted all power supply sources, including the backup generators, which in turn caused a cascading issue and resulted in degraded performance,” said Mimecast at 11:58 a.m. ET on its status page. “Midway through our Disaster Recovery Process, the power was restored which complicated our ability to recover. As of now, services are available and we are processing email but customers may still experience delays until the backlog clears. We sincerely apologize for the extended outage and the disruption caused.”

[RELATED STORY: Mimecast To Be Acquired By Private Equity Firm Permira For $5.8B]

Downdetector, which tracks global website and service outages, reported a spike in Mimecast customer outage complaints starting around 8 a.m. this morning.

By 3:50 p.m. ET, Mimecast said on its status website that it continues “to see an improvement on both mail flow and service availability and work to clear the backlog we are still investigating reports of service degradation and mail flow delays impacting some of our US-hosted customers.

Timothy Hamilton, a spokesman for Mimecast, declined to provide additional details to CRN about the power outage, how many customers were impacted, and ongoing complaints of email woes.

“We are still in the middle of our investigation, so cannot provide further comment at the moment,” he said in an email statement to CRN. “All updates will be made through our status page.”

Mimecast announced last December that it would be acquired by private equity player Permira for $5.8 billion. Shareholders approved the sale this past March. The deal is expected to close by the first half of this year and will transform Mimecast into a privately held company.