Redmond-based Microsoft released its figures for FY23 Q2 with news that Teams hit more than 280 million monthly active users in the quarter.
It also revealed that over the last 12 months, 5 million PSTN seats were added to Teams Phone.
More of the tech giant’s latest Microsoft Teams statistics were listed in the earnings call:
- Within Teams, the third-party apps with 10,000 users and above rose nearly 40 per cent year-over-year
- The number of Teams Rooms active devices went up by 70 per cent year-over-year to 500,000
- The figures for customers with more than 1,000 rooms doubled from last year
- Microsoft 365’s subscription tally of 63 million consumer users is up 12 per cent year-over-year
Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella stated: “We continue to take share across every category, from collaboration, to chat, to meetings, to calling. Teams has emerged as a first-class platform. Apps from Adobe, Atlassian, Polly, ServiceNow, and Workday have each surpassed half a million active users.”
“Novo Nordisk will deploy Teams Rooms to 5,000 meeting rooms globally in our largest deal.
“With Teams Premium, we’re meeting enterprise demand for advanced features like end-to-end encryption and AI-powered recaps. We’ve seen strong interest in the preview and will make it broadly available next month.”
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Microsoft Bets on AI to Transform Cloud
The tech firm’s results for the quarter ending December 31, 2022, revealed that revenues were up 2% to $52.7 billion.
In the earnings call, Microsoft put on a confident front by stating the second quarter results were driven by the strength of the cloud.
The Microsoft Cloud exceeded $27 billion in quarterly revenue, up 22% and 29% in constant currency. However, although Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment went up 18% in the quarter and its Azure services rose 31%, this compares to a drop in last year’s Q2 figures of 26% and 46%, respectively.
The market responded well with a 5% increase in shares (NASDAQ, MSFT), buoyed by cloud business and AI plans and subsequent online hyperbole. However, cloud growth was down from last year.
Nadella stated: “The next major wave of computing is being born, as the Microsoft Cloud turns the world’s most advanced AI models into a new computing platform.”
Repeating a mantra he started at Ignite last October, he said: “We are committed to helping our customers use our platforms and tools to do more with less today and innovate for the future in the new era of AI.”
Announcing a lucrative coup of potentially eye-watering proportions, he finally revealed more about Microsoft’s special deal and investment in OpenAI, the originator of the much-discussed ChatGPT:
“We’re pleased to be their exclusive cloud provider and will deploy their models across our consumer and enterprise products as we continue to push state of the art in AI.”
Fiscal Year 23 Q2 Focuses on Cloud
Meanwhile, the PC division faltered, with sales of PCs falling and Windows OEM — sales of operating systems to hardware manufacturers — falling 39%. Revenue in Personal Computing overall was $14.2 billion, down by 19% from last year.
The software firm incurred $1.2 billion in expenses during the quarter related to the decision made just a few days ago to lay off 10,000 employees, refresh its hardware lineup and consolidate leasing.
Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft, added:
“We are focused on operational excellence as we continue to invest in driving growth. Microsoft Cloud revenue was $27.1 billion, up 22% (up 29% in constant currency) year-over-year as our commercial offerings continue to drive value for our customer.”
Nadella focused on the AI driving more growth in the cloud; he elaborated: “We have the most powerful AI supercomputing infrastructure in the cloud. It’s being used by customers and partners, like OpenAI, to train state-of-the-art models and services, including ChatGPT.
“Just last week, we made Azure OpenAI Service broadly available, and over 200 customers — from KPMG to Al Jazeera — are using it. We will soon add support for ChatGPT, enabling customers to use it in their applications for the first time.”
Microsoft 365 and Teams Platforms Ready to Amplify
In the earnings call for the second quarter of 2023, the CEO reiterated what we forecasted in UC Today: that the next big wave of computer technology will supercharge Microsoft 365 platform with Teams at its core. Speaking about the ongoing investment strategy with the non-profit startup and generator of AI modelling, he declared: “Yesterday, we announced the completion of the next phase of our agreement with OpenAI.”
Nadella followed this up by referencing the exclusive partnership to be the startup’s sole cloud provider, deploying AI models across the enterprise and consumer products. The announcement represents the realisation of a long-term integration strategy for the Microsoft 365 platform and its UC&C centrepiece communications and collaboration tool Teams.
Nadella commented: “Microsoft 365 is rapidly evolving into an AI-first platform that enables every individual to amplify their creativity and productivity with our established applications, as well as new apps like Designer, Stream, and Loop.”
He added: “We have more than 63 million consumer subscribers, up 12 per cent year-over-year, and we introduced Microsoft 365 “Basic,” bringing our premium offerings to more people.”
The Advance of the Viva App Family
Microsoft has also gone to great lengths to create a new market category with employee experience and organisational productivity in the Viva communication and collaboration platform and its family of apps. Nadella spoke about firms taking on the concept of employee engagement and improving company culture. He said: “US Bank is using Viva to streamline employee communications. And Carlsberg turned to Viva to centralise its digital employee experience for 29,000 employees.”
He also added that the firm had seen strong interest in the app designed for Microsoft 365 sellers, Viva Sales; he commented: “We’ve seen strong interest since making it generally available this quarter.”
In summary, Nadella pointed to organisations and enterprises consolidating with Microsoft 365. He stated: “Eighty per cent of our enterprise customers use five or more Microsoft 365 applications. And organisations across the private and public sector, including EY, Ikea, NTT Communications, Rio Tinto, and the state government of Virginia, are increasingly choosing our premium E5 offerings for advanced security, compliance, voice, and analytics.”
