Microsoft has witnessed a huge rise of 775 percent in the usage of its cloud services across the globe, particularly in the areas with lockdown in place due to the coronavirus outbreak. Microsoft currently has more than 44 million daily usersgenerating over 900 million meeting and calling minutes. "Windows Virtual Desktop usage has grown more than 3 times. Government use of public ‘Power BI' to share COVID-19 dashboards with citizens has surged by 42 percent in a week," Jared Spataro, Corporate VP for Microsoft 365 said in a statement.

                The company has said that due to massive surge in the use of cloud resources, they have experienced significant demand across North Europe, West Europe, South UK, Central France, East Asia, South India and South Brazil. However, in spite of the significant surge in the demand, there has been no disruptions in the services as the company has implemented some sort of temporary restrictions to balance the best possible experience for the customers. "We have placed limits on free offers to prioritize capacity for existing customers. We also have limits on certain resources for new subscriptions. These are ‘soft' quota limits, and customers can raise support requests to increase these limits," said Spataro.

Keeping in the future possibilities of further demand for the services, the company is taking necessary measures to cope with the demand during high-usage periods. “At the same time, we’re taking proactive steps to plan for high-usage periods, which includes taking prudent measures with our publishing partners to deliver higher-bandwidth activities like game updates during off-peak hours,” Microsoft said. The company is indiscussions with several internet service providers that are taking measures to reduce bandwidth from video sources in order to enhance the performance of the networks during the peak hours and help users stay connected and work effectively.

Microsoft has said that its priority remains support for critical health and safety organizations and ensuring remote workers stay up and running.