- Microsoft is seeing a major increase in its cloud services across regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders
Microsoft is seeing a major increase in its cloud services across regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders. In a company blog post, the Microsoft Azure team pointed out that they are working to provide services to support hundreds of millions of people who rely on them to stay connected to work and play remotely.
“It’s times like this that remind us that each of us has something to contribute and the importance of coming together as a community,” wrote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a recent LinkedIn post.
In the past week, the Azure team saw a boost in services that support social distancing such as Microsoft Teams, Windows Virtual Desktop, and Power BI.
“We have seen a 775 percent increase in Teams’ calling and meeting monthly users in a one month period in Italy, where social distancing or shelter in place orders have been enforced,” said Microsoft in a blog post. “We have seen a very significant spike in Teams usage, and now have more than 44 million daily users. Those users generated over 900 million meeting and calling minutes on Teams daily in a single week.”
Microsoft is providing the highest level of monitoring during this time for first responders (fire, EMS, and police dispatch), emergency routing and reporting applications, medical supply management and delivery systems, applications to alert emergency response teams for accidents, healthbots and health screening apps, and health management applications and record systems. So Microsoft is implementing a few temporary restrictions designed to balance the best possible experience for all customers. And Microsoft place limits on free offers to prioritize capacity for existing customers.
“As people look to gaming for social connection, we’re seeing record numbers across Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live, and Mixer. To streamline moderation and ensure the best experience for our community, we’re making small adjustments. We’ve temporarily turned off the ability to upload custom gamerpics, club pics, and club backgrounds,” added the Xbox team in a notification.
And Microsoft is working with Xbox game publishers for delivering higher-bandwidth activities such as game updates during off-peak hours.
For Microsoft Teams, the company also made adjustments to non-essential capabilities like how often user presence is checked.
Update: This article has been adjusted for accuracy following corrections made in Microsoft’s Azure blog.
