There was a big Microsoft fail at the Iowa caucus
Maybe we should stick with the hand-written ballots.
The website tracking the Republican caucus results in Iowa experienced intermittent outages on Monday, a stumble for what had been a highly touted new system from Microsoft on its Azure cloud computing platform.
The reason for the outage was not immediately clear. People that tried to access the site were met with a messages: "The service is unavailable."
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The new system had been lauded as a significant leap forward in technology for a process that is often done with paper ballots sorted by hand.
However not long after results began to roll in, the website experienced some outages. The site worked intermittently for some at various points in the night.
There were no reports that the website for the Democrats had any issues.
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The incident drew attention immediately, given that 2016 is the most technologically connected election cycle in history.
Fairly or not, the incident drew some tongue-in-cheek comments that referenced the NFL playoff game just two weeks ago, when the New England Patriots had issues with their Microsoft Surface tablets, giving the Denver Broncos an advantage.
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Microsoft confirmed that the site was overwhelmed by interest. The company said that the Democratic site also experienced problems, but Mashable could not find any evidence of that.
"The mobile apps for both parties have been working without issue. National interest in the Iowa Caucuses has overwhelmed the Democratic and Republican Party Iowa Caucus websites, and we’re working to resolve," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
