Dive Brief:

• Microsoft expects two-thirds of its Office users to transition to cloud-based Office 365 by FY 2019, according to Rajesh Jha, EVP Office Product Group, speaking at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference in September, according to a ZDNet report. 
• The company boasts about 100 million active users on its commercial cloud, which includes more than 90 million iOS and Android Office customers, according to Jha.
• The Office software is considered a "horizontal" product, which Microsoft is leveraging for small business communication and collaboration, and its commercial seats have grown 8%, according to Jha. He claims this growth is an indicator not only of further cloud adoption but also of an increase in Office's overall user base. 

Dive Insight:

Microsoft's suite of offerings is nothing short of all-encompassing. The tech provider stays relevant by creating and adopting products and practices its consumers need. As cloud computing grows along with the desire for digital storage, management and analytics, Microsoft's software has adapted.

Microsoft revealed Microsoft 365 in July, a bundled version of cloud-based Windows 10 and Office 365 for the enterprise which is intended to be the "complete solution" for businesses of all sizes. Alongside its subscription-based models, Microsoft is presenting itself as the one-stop-shop for the enterprise. The company ranked first for Q2's SaaS market.

Its dominance in enterprise IT is only continuing as the company pushes out products designed for easy cloud migration, whether that's in the IaaS or SaaS space. Additional security management features and hybrid cloud solutions were added to the Azure platform in September.

Though the company still offers software for businesses reluctant or slow to digitize, Microsoft is continuing its rollout of cloud-based products. Its communication platform, Teams, now offers the 100 million Office 365 users and the 870 million users in the Azure Active Directory to communicate via a guest portal across companies.