Dive Brief:

• Microsoft’s Office 365 reigns as the most dominant software bundle, with double the customer base of Google’s G Suite, according to Okta. The report is based on data acquired from more than 5,500 integrations with cloud, mobile and web applications, and IT infrastructure providers.
• But companies aren’t solely investing in Office 365. More than three-quarters of Office 365 users have one or more apps that are duplicates of features in the software bundle. About 45% also use Salesforce, 36% use Amazon Web Services and 28% use Slack for communication.
• Microsoft, Workday and ServiceNow cinched the top three spots for most monthly active users. Salesforce and G Suite ranked fourth and fifth, respectively. 

Dive Insight:

Okta likens the rivalry between Microsoft and Google similar to Coke and Pepsi, dogs and cats. But Microsoft offers some of the most popular enterprise tools available on the market. 

Microsoft is facing competition for other software suites as companies like Google edge into the enterprise. The growth rate of G Suite is 116% year-over-year whereas Office 365’s growth rate is 55%. Google is playing catch up to the “Redmond Monster,” evidenced by the larger growth rate.

But the Microsoft appeal holds true. Okta found that more than two-thirds of respondents prefer Microsoft Word over Google Docs. The one-stop-shop nature of Microsoft has empowered it to create cloud-based solutions, like Office 365, that will eventually edge out single-purchase solutions like Office 2019.

Business productivity app bundles based on software as a service models are changing how companies interact with vendors. But software duplication is still a common practice. About 28% of the survey’s Office 365 users also subscribe to G Suite.

The No. 2 and No. 3 cloud providers have more to prove than the reliability of their software, a top concern for the survey respondents. Instead, companies of their size have to focus on corporate agility. It’s common for large vendors to create the appearance of lagging agility.