Two years of digital transformation in two months

This week Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella presented a quarterly earnings report on Wall Street, our first report in the COVID-19 era. During the call, Satya shared new figures: in April  ,  more than 200 million people participated in online meetings at  Microsoft  Teams daily , they spent more than 4.1 billion minutes in negotiations.  In addition,  Teams now has  over 75 million active users every day,  and two-thirds of them shared files or collaborated on them in Teams. 

As Satya Nadella said: “In two months, we saw the results of digital transformation, the achievement of which previously required two years. There was a transition from remote teamwork and training to remote sales, customer services, critical cloud infrastructure support and information security - we work daily with clients to help them adapt and grow their business in remote work. ”



We created Teams as a teamwork center, and all the necessary tools for cooperation are already built into the service. And just as it is impossible to bake a cake only from flour or only from eggs, you cannot give organizations the opportunity to collaborate remotely unless you combine tools for meetings, calls, chatting and collaboration in one service, keeping the context and allowing everyone to move in one rhythm. Below I will talk more about the role that Teams plays in a world where everything is remote, and share information from our customers about how Teams helps them work. But first, a few more words about numbers.

About numbers

During the call, Satya shared two types of important numerical data: the daily number of participants in online meetings and the daily number of active users. We see that different vendors use these metrics in different ways, but we are the only ones on the market who can provide both types of data. The reason is simple: Teams is the only solution offering chat, calls, online meetings and collaboration tools in one service.

How do we calculate each of the indicators? The daily number of participants in online meetings is the total number of people joining the meeting during the day, if one person attends five meetings a day, it will be counted five times. At the same time, we define the number of active users per day (DAU) as the maximum of daily users committing an intentional action in a 24-hour interval in the Teams desktop, mobile or web client. Deliberate actions include sending chat messages or replying to messages, attending a meeting, or opening a file in Teams.

We do not take into account passive actions, such as startup, reducing the screen size or closing the application. We also do not take into account the use of Skype or Skype for Business, as these are completely separate applications. We provide deduplicated data on the number of users per day, that is, we take into account each user only once.

Helping the world work

Teams helps organizations of all sizes from various industries -  education, government, healthcare, business - organize the joint work of employees, observing the highest standards of security and confidentiality. Worldwide, more than 183,000 educational institutions use Teams. In the United Arab Emirates alone, more than 350,000 students study remotely with Teams. In business, 20 organizations with more than 100,000 employees use Teams, including Continental AG, Ernst & Young, Pfizer and SAP. Also, last week, Accenture was the first organization to break the half-million mark of Teams users, and we are expanding our partnership with the NFL.
 
For several weeks of training, work and life in this mode, we all formed new habits. Some habits of the COVID-19 era will turn out to be temporary - for example, I know many parents who would like their children to start playing with friends as soon as possible again. But we believe that the habits that we see in Teams will continue long after the crisis is over. Data from China and South Korea shows that many companies continue to use Microsoft Teams even after returning to the office.

Helping our users

We were very inspired by the ingenuity and quick adaptation of our users when switching to remote work. Here are some of their stories.

Accenture :

“Accenture is one of the largest Microsoft Teams users in the world, and during today's unprecedented crisis this advantage has proved invaluable both for ourselves and for our customers who were able to continue their business and stay in touch with their employees and users,” says Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture.

Goodyear  Tire  Company :

“Our work experience from home can be called phenomenal. We were able to transfer 25,000 employees to remote work in a few days, and the Teams service played a key role in this. This confirms the massive growth in the use of Teams - in particular, the number of meetings at Teams increased by 410% compared to the normal week. We continued to work in the Goodyear style, providing holistic and informed care for our customers and employees, and Teams helps our teams continue to work and stay in touch with each other. ”- Sherry Neubert, Vice President and IT Director, Goodyear Tire Company

Technical  College  Guildford  ( Guildford  Contents Technical  Community  College ):

“We were faced with the need to introduce tools for cooperation in a few days, while initially we planned to allocate 90-120 days for this. Fortunately, we started testing and rebuilding the basic functionality in Teams in advance, although not across the organization. But when the COVID-19 pandemic began, we had only one choice - to deploy Teams for all our faculties and college staff, including conducting training sessions in it. Thanks to the Microsoft team, we were able to successfully implement this, and now we are working to introduce advanced functionality for the faculty, staff and students. Thank you so much for your responsiveness and desire to help in this difficult time, Microsoft team! You are super! ”, - Ron G. Horn, Director of Information Technology, Guildford Technical College

 Calderdale and Huddersfield  (Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust):

Consultant oncologist Joe Dent works at the foundation; several clinics for cancer patients are assigned to him; among his wards there are many young women leading an active life, combining work and motherhood. Previously, patients could choose the time of admission on certain days of the week, often for the five-day visit they had to go to the clinic with their family, spending an entire hour on the road. Dr. Dent can now communicate with patients using Teams at a convenient time for everyone. Dent says: “We can quickly talk through the video so that I can make sure that the treatment I prescribed works exactly as I expected.

This gives my patients the opportunity to take their children to school and make an appointment at a time that is convenient for them, and not just us. Thanks to Teams, we can offer patients a choice, and they experience much less stress. To be an oncologist, you need a lot of empathy, and it is impossible to show empathy if you constantly look at the clock. Virtual receptions help us to avoid rushing, and now I can support my patients and give them much-needed emotional help, ”- Joe Dent, Consultant Oncologist at the National Health Service Calderdale and Huddersfield Trust Fund.

Microsoft exists to help every person on the planet achieve more. To realize our mission, we strive to support  people exactly where they need it and in the ways that they need. We are proud to create tools that unite people and organizations around the world, we intend to further expand and improve them, while continuing to help our users to work successfully - during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.