14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft might be leading in the productivity software business with its Office suite, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that its position is secure, with rivals like Google always looking into ways to attract more customers and convince Microsoft’s to switch sides.
This is what happened with media measurement firm Nielsen Holdings who recently decided to give up on Microsoft’s Office apps and transition to Google’s G Suite in a very surprising move that involves 56,000 employees.
Bloomberg reports that this is “a rare win” for Google in the fight against Microsoft, especially because the search company’s business productivity solution G Suite is still behind its rival and the majority of customers go for Microsoft Office despite the improving functionality.
Microsoft’s Office bringing home the bacon
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Microsoft’s declining in a substantial manner in this side of the market, though it goes without saying that each customer counts and losing such an important company is certainly a big hit.
According to the firm’s FY2017 Q4 financial statement, the Productivity and Business Processes revenue improved 21 percent to reach $8.4 billion, with Office commercial products and cloud services revenue in particular growing no less than 5 percent. Office 365 commercial revenue also increased 43 percent.
Furthermore, Microsoft bragged about signing more customers, praising the growth of its Office division in the last quarter.
“We continue to see strong growth of Office 365 with customers like Nissan, Quicken Loans, Key Bank and Deutsche Telekom all choosing Office 365. And importantly, customers are moving beyond core workloads to adopt higher value workloads. For example, we’ve seen a significant increase in SharePoint usage, which nearly doubled year-over-year,” CEO Satya Nadella said.
Google, however, isn’t giving up on the fight. G Suite currently has no less than 3.5 million paying customers, up from approximately 3 million in January, the company says, with sales of approximately $1.6 billion in 2016 alone.