Microsoft Gets Enough Torque To Top Apps In The Cloud

Cloud-based app Slack showed heady growth through the latter half of last year, but Microsoft’s Office 365 still remained on top as the most popular cloud app geared toward businesses at 2015’s end.

As reported by Re/code, that competitive dynamic was part of the findings in a report released by Okta, a firm that helps companies navigate the cloud and which tracked the use of more than 4,000 applications across 2,500 entities.

As for growth rates, Slack remained the highest, followed by Tableau, which gained 65 percent, and then New Relic, which added 56 percent.

Looking at usage overall, Microsoft held sway, Salesforce followed and Box was third. Google Apps was up next and then Amazon Web Services. At the end of the top 10, noted the research, was Dropbox.

A bird’s eye view found overall use of cloud services up by 20 percent over the same period in 2014. Most of the firms responding said they use between 10 and 16 apps.

Within firms, Microsoft Office and Google Apps often are used side by side. The former is a way to keep a licensed running copy of Office running on site, while the latter can create Office-compatible documents and spreadsheets and its collaboration tools are valued by workers.

Total Microsoft suites — spanning Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online and Azure — were up 116 percent. Adobe’s Creative Cloud and EchoSign offerings were up 144 percent. Companies bought by SAP, including Successfactors, were up 133 percent.