Some of the world’s largest economies are currently in a state of flux. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen major nations in Europe and parts of the United States put into full lockdowns. Tens of millions of people have been forced indoors and those that can work from home, are. Microsoft cloud services like Microsoft Teams have saw a surge in users since the rise of the outbreak.
In an Azure blog post, Microsoft says “We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders.” To help deal with the rise in users, Microsoft is making some tweaks to services to help them cope.
Over the last two weeks, Microsoft has reported record user numbers for Xbox Live, Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, and Microsoft Teams. Furthermore, Windows Virtual Desktop usage has more than tripled.
Microsoft Teams has been affected, with an outage two weeks ago and another today. Microsoft says its userbase went from around 20 million to 44 million in the space of days.
“To streamline moderation and ensure the best experience for our community, we’re making small adjustments,” says an Xbox support note. “We’ve temporarily turned off the ability to upload custom gamerpics, club pics, and club backgrounds.”
Teams Tweaks
Last week, Microsoft said it was reducing the abilities of some Office 365 apps, notable SharePoint, OneNote, and Stream. Looking at Microsoft Teams, the company has announced some tweaks to improve the capacity of the service.
“We made a few temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities such as how often we check for user presence, the interval in which we show when the other party is typing, and video resolution.”
