Microsoft clarifies a slightly misleading claim about a leap in cloud service usage during coronavirus pandemic
Over the weekend, Microsoft post an article on its Azure blog announcing that there had been an astronomical 775 percent surge in the use of its cloud services. Despite the massive increase in traffic, the company added, uptime was good. But the blog post wasn't entirely correct.
Since we published a story about the claims, Microsoft has contacted us to say that it had not been "was not as clear as they intended to be with the previous statement". The company has provided updated stats explaining what it meant to say -- and it's rather different.
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While Microsoft's initial statement suggested that that had been a massive surge is the use of its cloud services in places where people were self-isolating or had been told to stay at home, there are a few caveats that need to be borne in mind.
Firstly, the increased usage only applied to Teams, Secondly, the increase was only over a one-month period. Thirdly, it was only in Italy. It's still a significant jump in usage of Teams, but it's a somewhat different story to the one that was first presented.
Microsoft has now updated the blog post with the correct information, leaving the original claim in place but struck through:
- We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders.
- We have seen a 775 percent increase in Teams' calling and meeting monthly users in a one month period in Italy, where social distancing or shelter in place orders have been enforced.
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