Distant work throughout coronavirus outbreak places hundreds of thousands extra on Microsoft Groups, Slack

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) Groups chat and conferencing app gained greater than 12 million every day customers in a single week, a 37.5% soar as extra folks labored from dwelling throughout the coronavirus outbreak, the corporate stated on Thursday.

Groups had 44 million customers as of March 18, Microsoft stated, greater than double the 20 million every day lively customers that the software program maker reported in November. Groups customers grew from 32 million to 44 million within the interval between March 11 and March 18 alone, as many extra U.S. corporations requested staff to earn a living from home, Microsoft stated.

There have been no comparable current numbers for the key rival to Groups, collaboration app Slack Applied sciences Inc (WORK.N), which stated in October that it had 12 million every day lively customers.

Slack didn’t replace that determine throughout its earnings announcement on March 12, however stated 4 of its 5 largest offers in the latest quarter had been gained towards Microsoft Groups. On Thursday, Slack stated it added 7,000 new paid clients from Feb. 1 to March 18, a roughly 40% enhance over every of its earlier two fiscal quarters, when it had added about 5,000 new paid clients per quarter.

Microsoft additionally rolled out a number of options designed to assist with telemedicine and dealing from dwelling, akin to a bookings utility for Groups to assist hospitals handle digital appointments.

“As organizations world wide are altering the best way they work in response to the (coronavirus) state of affairs, we’re going to be taught an incredible quantity,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief government, stated in a digital information convention.

Microsoft fees charges to companies for its full variations of Groups, however there’s a free model that can be utilized by customers.

Microsoft stated Thursday that medical doctors at St. Luke’s College Well being Community in Pennsylvania, who had already been utilizing the Groups app, will begin tapping it for videoconferencing with sufferers, together with these susceptible to the novel coronavirus, to guard sufferers and the hospital. Slack earlier this week stated it was making the service free for a lot of organizations working to reply to or mitigate the coronavirus and was rushing up the set-up time for brand spanking new clients.

Microsoft additionally stated it was engaged on a number of new options utilizing synthetic intelligence that would make working from dwelling simpler for Groups customers.

One characteristic can mechanically change the background throughout a video chat, for instance cropping out a messy dwelling bed room and changing it with an image of a tidy business workplace. One other characteristic can filter out background sounds throughout a convention name, such because the crinkling of a plastic potato chip bag.