Office 365 has grown 400 percent after 4 Years in China

In 2014, Microsoft announced the opening of its Office 365 cloud service in China with the help of local partners. Office 365 became the only international cloud productivity platform in China, as well as the first cross-platform and cross-device productivity tool in China. Prior to this, Microsoft’s Azure cloud service had also entered the Chinese market.

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As of April 17, Office 365 has been in China for four years.

Report Card of Office 365 in Four Years

On the four-year anniversary of Office 365, Microsoft issued a report:

• The overall business growth of Office 365 operated by CenturyLink exceeded 400 percent;
• Office 365 ranked first in China’s SaaS market, occupying 23 percent of China’s SaaS collaboration software market share;
• Half of the unicorns in China’s internet industry partnered with Office 365, and 96 percent of Microsoft partners were satisfied with Office 365’s profitability;
• Office 365 serves over 30,000 corporate customers, over 1.5 million paying corporate users, and more than 20 million educational users.

Microsoft Office 365 has made many efforts to better penetrate Chinese market this year. For example, it has launched multiple versions and services for family, education, corporations, and non-profit organizations. They have promoted the use of Office applications in a number of local app stores and partnered with giants including Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu. In short, Office 365 has made many attempts for localization in China and has achieved good results.

Among the many attempts, the most important move was that of Microsoft CEO Staya Nadella, who announced the commercialization of Office 365 Micro Assistant at the 2017 Technology Ecology Conference. This is an intelligent office service based on the WeChat platform, which is the only localized intelligent assistant created by Office 365 on a global scale.

Under the Support of AI

Undoubtedly, AI has become the core driving technology in the development of Office 365. According to Microsoft, as one of the most widely used productivity platforms in the world, Office 365 benefits people through use of artificial intelligence.

In fact, Microsoft has already added many AI capabilities such as speech recognition, semantic recognition, and image recognition into the Office 365 Mini Assistant. Office 365 for China has integrated 53 innovative AI functions.

Faced with the digital transformation trend in the Chinese market, Microsoft China launched the Office 365 Cloud Service Strategy at the tenth anniversary of Microsoft Office in China. Specifically, the strategy is about capitalizing Office 365’s advantages in China and around the world. It not only helps Chinese companies go overseas, but also enables international companies to deeply explore the Chinese market, especially in terms of business efficiency, compliance and data security.