Celebrations were in order for Microsoft as their Office 365 platform earns the title of “most popular enterprise cloud service” five years after the initial launch. Since we first encountered Office 365, the solution has grown and adapted dramatically to fit the needs of the evolving enterprise market – offering a range of services to a vast range of business types.
The evidence of Microsoft’s popularity comes after an analysis was performed by Skyhigh Networks on 27 million employees. The research found that in the last two years, Office 365 has surpassed all of the other cloud providers available, emerging as the most widely-accessed enterprise service by user count. It’s no surprise either – if you consider just how vast the range of features offered by Microsoft is – including Skype for Business and a host of other productivity elements.
Microsoft Office 365
The Microsoft 365 platform can be accessed through a recurring subscription. You simply sign up for the service that you want, and pay a fee every time you want to renew your subscription, with the promise that you’ll get plenty of regular updates along the way. The release of this new cloud-based solution for business represented a significant update from the traditional nature of Microsoft’s one-time purchase licensing fees that many of us have used in the past. As Skyhigh has commented in its report, the update is part of Satya Nadella’s aim to make Microsoft a subscription company based on renting, rather than selling software.
Since 2015, Microsoft Office 365 has seen a 320% increase in users up until the second quarter of 2016. Although you can still access various parts of Microsoft software on your desktop computer, 20% of all corporate employees are now using an office 365 cloud service, according to Skyhigh. That’s an increase from only 7% in 2015. It’s safe to say not only that the popularity of cloud-based services is becoming more pronounced, but that Microsoft is a big part of what users love about the cloud productivity interface today.
Adopting the New Cloud Network
Though the services and solutions offered by Microsoft Office 365 seem to be in a constant state of evolution, many enterprises are eager to use several of their services. The Skyhigh survey, for instance, revealed that in companies with more than 100 users, 79% have installed OneDrive for business, while 67% have exchanged Exchange online for their calendar and contact management, and 60% have installed Skype for Business.
Though many companies have yet to make the most of the Microsoft Office services in their portfolio, the interest in cloud-based solutions is rising, and Microsoft is at the head of the revolution. Ever since the middle of March 2015, Office 365 has been surpassing Google Apps for enterprise based business, according to a Cloud Security report. Additionally, although most experts considered Microsoft cloud solutions to be somewhat of an underdog during 2014, they had already tripled their adoption rate by the next year, to 25% in 2015, compared to only 7.7%.
The Growth of Microsoft
At this stage, we can only wait with excitement to see what the following years bring for Microsoft Office 365. With so much popularity, and a great history of growth over the recent years, it makes sense that the company would continue to see adoption rates soaring among the enterprise sector. In 2016, Office 365 already had 70 million users – and that number is still growing.
