Office 365 crushes Google Apps in the enterprise; now owns 25.2% market share

Microsoft Office 365 has overtaken Google Apps as the top vendor of cloud email and productivity software, according to a new study by Bitglass. Microsoft Office 365 adoption grew more than 300 percent to 25.2 percent of enterprises compared to just 7.7 percent last year. However, Google is still growing its enterprise user base, up to 22.8 percent from 16.3 percent last year. Bitglass’ report used cloud-based analysis of traffic data from nearly 120,000 organisations globally. The focus of the report includes major enterprise cloud applications, including Microsoft O365, Google Apps, SalesForce and Box. [caption id=“attachment_2402286” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Source: Microsoft[/caption] Overall, nearly half (48 percent) of enterprises are using cloud-based productivity and email suites, the report said. The report also revealed  that overall adoption of cloud-based email in organisations with more than 1,000 employees rose drastically  from 18 percent to 57 percent. Meanwhile, organisations with fewer than 500 employees nearly doubled from 24 percent to 44 percent during the past year. In regulated industries, organisations with more than 1,000 employees showed great interest in Google Apps and Microsoft O365. Since 2014, Google Apps has shown a 200 percent increase (from five percent to 15 percent) and Office 365 has observed an incredible 500 percent increase (from five percent to 30 percent). According to Bitglass, EMEA (at 59 percent) and APAC (at 61 percent) outpaced North American (at 48 percent) in the cloud adoption curve. Finland embraced the cloud more than any other country with 78 percent of enterprises using Google or Microsoft. Both APAC and EMEA showed higher adoption of critical security solutions such as single sign-on (SSO). “Cloud adoption is at an all-time high and Microsoft is winning over Google. The surprise is that large corporations, even in heavily regulated industries, are gaining confidence in using cloud apps,” said Nat Kausik, CEO of Bitglass. “The increased focus on security, including the emergence of third-party security services from cloud access security brokers , are filling critical gaps, paving the way for broader adoption of cloud apps in the enterprise.”