July 20 (Reuters) - A global tech outage that was

related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike ( CRWD )

affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft ( MSFT ) devices,

Microsoft ( MSFT ) said in a blog on Saturday.

"We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's ( CRWD ) update affected

8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all

Windows machines," it said in the blog.

CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) has helped develop a scalable solution that will

help Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix,

Microsoft ( MSFT ) said, adding that the tech giant had worked with both

Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to collaborate on

the "most effective approaches."

Air passengers worldwide faced delays, flight cancellations

and headaches checking in as airports and airlines were caught

up in the IT outage that affected numerous industries ranging

from banks to media companies.