Software giant Microsoft’s Office 365 is the most widely used cloud application among businesses.
The company has beat the long-popular Salesforce.com, according to Okta, a company that helps companies manage their cloud apps.
Okta which provides a cloud service to help companies manage and secure their sign-in credentials across multiple cloud applications analyzed the use of 4,000 different cloud applications at 2,500 companies in 185 countries.
It has been tracking the data since 2012.
The company pegs Office’s success in the cloud to moves undertaken by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to encourage the company’s customers to embrace its cloud software offerings, not just in the productivity suite, but also with its Outlook email services.
However, Google Apps remains more popular than Office 365 in several countries including Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Australia.
The third-most widely deployed application was Box, followed by Google Apps and Concur, the expense-tracking service acquired last year by the German software giant SAP.
On average companies deploy between 11 and 16 cloud apps company-wide. This was equally true at small companies and large ones, Okta CEO Todd McKinnon said in an interview.
“When we started Okta to help companies mange cloud identities, people said we were crazy because there weren’t very many cloud applications,” he said. “Now there’s a cloud replacement for pretty much every traditional on-premise app that a business might use.”
This is Okta’s first report of its kind.
