Microsoft Teams went down across much of Europe, just as millions of professionals began this week working from the comfort of their homes in an ongoing and international effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The outage lasted approximately two hours early Monday but came at a raw time for many businesses turning to enterprise collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Cisco Webex to keep their businesses running as the world is gripped by a global pandemic.

Even when much of the world isn't trying to work remotely, collaborative communication tools can be an incredibly challenging service to deliver. As such, these enterprise application suites are one of the leading drivers of SD-WAN adoption. In Aryaka's 2019 State of the WAN report, a survey found 41% of respondents had experienced challenges with poor voice and video quality, 31% reported trouble with lagging connections, and 28% experienced set up and maintenance issues.

However, in anticipation of a ramp in traffic, many providers have issued statements detailing the steps they have taken to prevent disruptions.

"While the Cisco Webex infrastructure is seeing an unprecedented increase in meeting usage and messaging usage over the last few weeks, the Webex Cloud Engineering team has been diligently managing for this global increase, with a predominant focus on our backbone and last-mile connectivity," said Sri Srinivasan, who leads Cisco's collaboration business, in an email to SDxCentral.

Webex traffic from China has increased by more than 2,000% since the outbreak began, according to Cisco. "We continue to see unprecedented increases in the amount of time spent on Webex video meetings in Japan, Singapore, China, and South Korea," the company reports.

Furthermore, Cisco says more than 30% of its enterprise customers have reached out for help getting their employees set up to work from home. Cisco and Microsoft aren't the only vendors experiencing increased demand.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wrote that his company has a responsibility to do everything within its power to support those affected by the new coronavirus by providing access to reliable communications technology. The company has since removed limits on its free tier for users in China.

"The growing epidemic has broadened my view on what it means to be a video communications technology provider in times of need," he wrote. "I know many organizations are grappling with how to maintain business continuity and keep employees engaged amid the threat of the virus, and I'm compelled to help anyone who needs it."

Zoom isn't alone in this commitment. Since the start of the outbreak, both Microsoft and Cisco have made their platforms available for free to businesses affected by COVID-19. These companies have also taken steps to expand the capacity of their services to ensure as few disruptions as possible.

"Microsoft has been significantly expanding capacity in key regions with the recent announcements regarding the COVID-19 outbreak," Microsoft wrote in a statement. "We are monitoring the situation and our services very closely to ensure that our services are available for our customers."

Microsoft said there has been a significant increase in demand for Microsoft Teams and the company is taking steps to keep up with demand. However, Microsoft admits that despite its efforts to prevent problems, unexpected peaks in demand due the spread of the virus may create temporary issues.

"While we're actively monitoring and adding capacity as needed, you might feel impact until we're able to add capacity in those areas," the company wrote in a statement.

Microsoft isn't the only vendor that's experienced outages due to the influx of remote workers. Monday afternoon Zoom reported challenges with its phone service. Cisco also reports that several of its services were taken down on March 11, however, its core Webex services were reportedly unaffected.