Increased Remote Work Due to COVID-19... MS Collaboration Tool 'Teams' Surpasses 44 Million Daily Users

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] As the number of remote workers worldwide increases due to the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the daily users of the messenger-based collaboration tool Microsoft (MS) Teams have surpassed 44 million. This is an increase of 12 million in just one week.

On the 19th (local time), according to local media such as CNBC, MS revealed this usage status on the occasion of the 3rd anniversary of Teams' launch. The daily user count, which was around 20 million last November, expanded to 32 million on the 11th of this month and 44 million on the 18th of the same month. The increase in the past week is comparable to the growth over the last four months.

This is a result of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases leading to the expansion of remote work among companies worldwide. MS is providing its collaboration tool ‘Teams’ free of charge and operating an emergency support center to consult on its usage for companies that are not yet prepared to implement remote work.

Jared Spataro, MS Vice President, stated in a press release that "COVID-19 is affecting the lives of people around the world. It will be a turning point in the way we work and learn," and explained, "We have confirmed a rapid increase in (Teams) usage in markets heavily affected by COVID-19." In the Netherlands, the number of users increased 14-fold in the past week. Spain saw a 10-fold increase, and France a 7-fold increase.

This trend is also observed not only in MS Teams but also in Slack, a messenger-type collaboration tool created by American developer Stewart Butterfield. Slack confirmed that the number of paid subscribers increased by 7,000 from February 1 to March 18. A Slack spokesperson told CNBC, "We are handling over 5 billion actions every week."

Accordingly, the role of companies providing related services is also growing to prevent connection failures and other issues in the future. Earlier, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also revealed that the number of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger users surged recently due to the spread of COVID-19.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.