Microsoft Office 365 Continues To Grow Despite Competition

Microsoft Office has long been king of the office software market with popular programs like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, and more. They've continued to dominate in that market with their latest cloud-based Office product Microsoft Office 365, which recently hit more than 22 million subscribers in this last quarter, according to Windows Report.

Microsoft Office 365 was first launched in June 2011 and allows the use of popular Office software (Word, Powerpoint, etc.) on Windows and Mac, online storage in Microsoft's cloud-based OneDrive, and 60 Skype minutes per month. 

The technology giant recently hit 22.2 million Office 365 subscribers, up from 20.6 million in the previous quarter. That's a six percent growth in the number of people adopting the Office pack. Recent figures also show that 1.2 billion people around the world use Office programs on their computers, tablets or phones.

This is good news from Microsoft as it is sees increasing competition from other tech giants like Google. Google has been competing against Office 365 with their own product, Google for Work Apps.

Companies that sign an enterprise agreement with Microsoft (an agreement where a company agrees to use services for a specific period of time) are also given offers from Google for its own products that compete with Microsoft Office, according to WinBeta. Google said it has a gameplan to steal about 80 percent of Microsoft's clients. 

Also competing with Microsoft is open-source alternative Open365, which offers cloud-based editing and storage for users on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android platforms, Lifehacker reported. Starting out, they offer 20GB of storage. Right now, the service is in beta. 

Still, in spite of competition from Google and open-source products like Open365, Microsoft's Office 365 has continued to grow faster than both, according to WinBeta.