Microsoft has announced that Teams has topped 44 million users as more individuals work from home and rely on virtual interactions during the coronavirus pandemic.
Microsoft has been locked in a rivalry with Slack for the business chat market. In November Microsoft doubled Slack’s user base. Now, just four months later, the company has hit 44 million, growing from 32 million in the last week.
“In the face of COVID-19, there are countless stories from customers who are using Teams to connect and thrive in inspiring ways,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365. “A professor at University of Bologna in Italy shared on Twitter how the school moved 90 percent of courses online to Teams within four days, which is definitely a first in the university’s 900-plus year history. Doctors at St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania will use Teams for videoconferencing with patients, especially those who are most vulnerable to coronavirus, as a way to protect both patients and healthcare providers. And the City of Osaka in Japan is using Teams to conduct orientations and trainings for hundreds of new incoming employees in April.
“Stories like these are playing out in countries the world over. We believe that this sudden, globe-spanning move to remote work will be a turning point in how we work and learn. Already, we are seeing how solutions that enable remote work and learning across chat, video, and file collaboration have become central to the way we work. We have seen an unprecedented spike in Teams usage, and now have more than 44 million daily users, a figure that has grown by 12 million in just the last seven days. And those users have generated over 900 million meeting and calling minutes on Teams each day this week.”
The longer the pandemic goes on, companies like Microsoft, Slack and Zoom are likely to see their user bases skyrocket.
