Microsoft Teams’ strong growth at the start of the pandemic has continued to accelerate over the past six months. During Microsoft’s Q1 2020 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella shared that Microsoft Teams has passed 115 million daily active users. That’s up 53% from the 75 million daily active users reported in April. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the new normal of remote working, Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users.
“Teams now has more than 115 million daily active users,” Nadella said. “We are seeing increased usage and intensity as people communicate, collaborate, and coauthor content across work, life, and learning. Microsoft 365 users generated more than 30 billion collaboration minutes in a single day this quarter.”
At present, Teams is used mainly for internal collaboration, with few businesses using it for external communication. Cavell Group estimated that at the beginning of 2020, less than 10% of Teams users had the external telephony feature enabled. We expect this to change over the next few years as enterprises realise the business benefits of switching from traditional on-premises phone systems to cloud-based telephony solutions. As we wrote about in our recent blog, adding cloud telephony to Teams can lead to more flexible ways of working, improved employee productivity and reduced operational costs.
We expect Microsoft to become a major force in cloud telephony. It is predicted that by 2025, more than 30% of cloud telephony users are expected to use Phone System or other Microsoft PBX solutions. Microsoft’s Phone System turns Teams into a full enterprise telephony solution, allowing users to make and receive external calls directly from Teams on any device from anywhere in the world.
Currently, businesses can add cloud telephony to Teams by using Microsoft’s own Calling Plans or through Direct Routing which uses a third-party managed service provider to connect the Microsoft Phone System to the PSTN network. Typically, Direct Routing is the preferred choice for larger organisations as it offers wider geographic coverage, lower rates and increased levels of support.
LoopUp offers Direct Routing to connect Teams users to our global voice network. To find out how we can help you move your business telephony to the cloud, arrange a free consultation.
