Microsoft has revealed two huge milestones for Teams despite the collaboration platform taking a backseat during the vendor’s earnings call as Copilot dominated discussions again.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft crossed the one million Teams Rooms threshold for the first time in the vendor’s fiscal Q3 but again stopped short of revealing the trusty monthly active user figure that had been a staple of Microsoft investor calls since the start of the decade.
Nadella reserved a short section of his prepared remarks for Teams, but the focus was mainly on artificial intelligence.
“When it comes to Teams, we once again saw year-over-year usage growth,” the chief executive said.
“We’re rolling out a new version, which is up to two times faster while using 50 percent less memory for all customers.
“We surpassed one million Teams Rooms for the first time as we continue to make hybrid meetings better with new AI-powered features like automatic camera switching and speaker recognition.”
Alongside Rooms, Nadella also revealed a milestone for Teams Phone.
The CEO said Teams Phone now has 20 million PSTN users, up nearly 30 percent on the same quarter last year.
“All of this innovation is driving growth across Microsoft 365 companies across the private and public sector, including Amadeus, BlackRock, Chevron, Ecolab, Kimberly Clark, [which] all chose our premium E5 offerings this quarter for advanced security, compliance, voice, and analytics,” he added.
Microsoft has not revealed overall Teams stats since October last year, when it pegged monthly active users at 320 million.
The Bigger Picture
Nadella was speaking as Microsoft revealed total sales of $61.9bn, up 17 percent year on year. Operating income jumped 23 percent to $27.6bn.
As is usually the case, the vendor reported sales growth across almost all of its categories and segments, with devices the sole unit to see a decline. Microsoft said this resulted from its focus on “higher-margin, premium products”.
It was, however, Microsoft’s cloud credentials that stole the show.
The vendor’s Intelligent Cloud unit, which houses its Azure public cloud infrastructure technology, brought in $26.7bn in revenue, beating analyst expectations. The sales reveal came shortly after Microsoft unveiled a huge cloud deal with Coca-Cola.
Copilot dominated discussions on the earnings call with Nadella and CFO Amy Hood, albeit without any revenue figures attached to the hype.
Nadella rattled through various Copilot use cases across Azure, Microsoft 365, app development, customer service, and more.
He revealed that nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies are using the generative AI tool, with huge companies, including Cognizant, Koch Industries, Moody’s, Novo Nordisk, NVIDIA, and Tech Mahindra, purchasing over 10,000 seats.
In Other News
Microsoft Teams Classic app will no longer be supported after July 1st, 2024, as Microsoft rolls out a new Teams client.
Microsoft urged users to switch to the new version to avoid service disruptions. Various reminders will be issued leading up to the end of support date, and users can continue using the classic version until the ‘end of availability’, which varies based on operating systems. Admins have options for managing the transition, with Microsoft-managed rollouts and toggle options available.
Earlier this week, Microsoft brought former Meta executive Jason Taylor on board to join its AI supercomputing team. Taylor assumed the role of Corporate Vice President and Deputy CEO at Microsoft, reporting to Kevin Scott, Microsoft CTO.
During his tenure at Meta from 2009 to 2022, Taylor served as Vice President of Infrastructure, overseeing AI, data, and privacy infrastructure and managing the company’s server budgets. He also chaired the Open Compute Project Foundation from 2015 to 2017.
