Microsoft logs 2.7 billion meeting minutes on March 31

San Francisco, April 9 (IANS) As the salary day progressed amid COVID-19 lockdowns, Microsoft registered a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes in a single day on March 31 — 200 per cent increase from 900 million on March 16, the company announced on Thursday.

As students and teachers turn to Teams for distance learning, there are 183,000 tenants in 175 countries using Teams for Education, said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365.

“As the world works remotely, it is no surprise people are turning on video in Teams meetings two times more than before many of us began working from home full-time. We’ve also seen total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March,” Spataro informed.

Microsoft found people in Norway and the Netherlands turn on video most, with about 60 per cent of calls including video.

“People in Australia use video in meetings 57 per cent of the time, Italy 53 per cent, Chile 52 per cent, Switzerland 51 per cent, and Spain 49 per cent. People in the UK, Canada, and Sweden use video 47 per cent of the time and people in Mexico and the US use it 41 per cent and 38 per cent respectively,” the company said.

People in India use video in 22 per cent of meetings, Singapore 26 per cent, South Africa 36 per cent, France 37 per cent, and Japan 39 per cent.

“This may be attributed in part to less access to devices and stable internet in some regions such as India and South Africa,” said Spataro.

From March 1-March 31, the average time between a person’s first use of Teams and last use of Teams each day increased by over one hour.

The number of weekly Teams mobile users grew more than 300 per cent from early February to March 31.

“We’ve seen large increases in usage of Teams on mobile devices from customers in higher education and primary and secondary education (K-12). We’ve also seen a notable increase from customers in government-related industries,” said Spataro.

Microsoft Stream is the service that powers live events and meeting recordings in Teams.

“As a result of customers moving events online, the number of Stream videos in Teams per week has increased over five times in the last month with hundreds of hours of video uploaded per minute,” the executive said.

–IANS

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