Microsoft's cloud version of its Office suite has grown fivefold over the past year and is signing up "hundreds of new customers" each month.
This is according to Uriel Rootshtain, business lead for Microsoft's Office division, who also notes the churn rate is in low single digits. He adds the net additions more than compensate for those who give up using the service.
Microsoft is seeing "phenomenal" growth year-on-year, says Rootshtain of the service that launched locally some 18 months ago. Office 365, which launched in June 2011, is partly based on technology that was initially behind the now mostly defunct Hotmail service.
Globally, Microsoft has just crossed the $2 billion run rate mark from a revenue perspective, says Rootshtain. Although he is unable to give specific South African usage figures, he notes Office 365 is the fastest-growing product in Microsoft's history.
Rootshtain expects growth to taper somewhat over the next two years among its top 200 users, as full penetration has almost been reached. However, he notes there is a lot of opportunity in the mid-market - companies with between 500 and a few thousand users - and growth should come from this area.
In addition, says Rootshtain, the small and medium business segment is accelerating as channel partners keep signing up. In the last quarter, Microsoft signed up 300 additional partners, which has led to an increase in this segment.
Rootshtain explains Microsoft tracks licence activations, as well as when the licence key is assigned to a specific user. He notes there is always a time lag between when larger companies buy and then use the service, but take up among smaller entities is more rapid.
Implementing the cloud service is always more complicated among large organisations because this depends on the entities' workload and architecture, Rootshtain adds. He says, for example, migrating 20 000 users could take six months, depending on a company's circumstances.
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