In 2011, Microsoft launched Office 365, a collection of apps bundled under one subscription, and accessible across desktop and handheld devices. Since then, the technology giant has consistently added tools and new features to enhance it. Microsoft’s remote work offerings began in earnest with the launch of SharePoint 2001, a collaboration tool for communication amongst teams and centralized content storage. In April 2020, the company changed the product name from Office 365 to Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 uses a subscription model that charges between USD 5-USD 20 per month. It also added a new project management app, Lists, to its enterprise software suite in May 2020 followed by the launch of its productivity tracking tools named Power BI Goals in May 2021, Microsoft announced the tool is built on Microsoft’s data visualization platform, Power BI, allowing users to assign and track tasks to manage productivity.

Word Online was launched in 2010—a rival to Google Docs. Users could create, share and collaborate using office package tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In 2011, the company launched Lync, an instant messaging, audio, and video conferencing tool which was combined with Skype for Business after Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype for USD 8.5 billion that same year. Moreover, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn reportedly invested around USD 50 million in virtual events startup Hopin’s oversubscribed secondary Series C round in June 2021. The two companies are expected to collaborate to allow users to extend their live events reach to LinkedIn.

Both tools would take a back seat to Microsoft Teams when it was launched in 2017, however. Now the primary communication tool for Microsoft 365, it provides threaded chats, voice and video conferencing, and file sharing, with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint all built in. Microsoft Teams is considered a strong rival to Slack. Teams is included in a Microsoft 365 subscription and was later announced to be directly integrated to its operating system Windows in June 2021. It is especially well positioned given the large built-in customer base of Microsoft 365 enterprise users and the availability of Microsoft Teams at no additional cost. Teams reported 75 million daily active users (DAUs) in 2019, well ahead of Slack's last reported 12 million. As of July 2021, Teams had 250 million monthly active users. As a result, Microsoft faces an antitrust claim filed by Slack citing unfair use of Microsoft’s market power to drive adoption of Teams.

As a result of the Covid pandemic, Microsoft has made efforts to make its offering more suited for hybrid work where organization-wide training programs, conferences, and virtual events are the norm. Microsoft launched a set of new updates to its Office productivity suite in June and September 2021 to bridge the gap between in-office and remote coworkers. The updates and features were announced for Teams (new hardware, audio tracking and people recognition features), PowerPoint (new laser pointer and integrated camera feeds), and its Whiteboard app (new templates for kanban boards).

Microsoft unveiled its virtual reality platform, Microsoft Mesh, which enables users to meet virtually in 3D spaces, in March 2021. Powered by the Azure cloud platform, Mesh allows individuals to interact by appearing on-screen as avatars or animated characters. The platform is expected to be integrated with Microsoft Teams. Furthermore, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Peer5, a developer of technology that enables large-scale live video streaming solutions, in August 2021.

Founded in 2012, Peer5 claims to be the largest peer-to-peer content delivery network. It offers a WebRTC-based enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) that optimizes bandwidth usage. Its self-balancing mesh networks automatically scale as the number of viewers increases—resulting in high-quality live video streaming for larger audiences. Peer5 has raised USD 3.5 million in funding to date, and facilitated large-scale events with as many as 2 million concurrent users with its technology being used by more than 1 billion users. Microsoft intends to integrate Peer5’s eCDN technology into Microsoft Teams to enable large-scale live video streaming.

Microsoft announced plans to acquire the web-based video editing platform Clipchamp in September 2021. Clipchamp is a browser-based video creation platform aimed at the masses (even non-professionals) in the video creation and editing field. It offers a gamut of video editing features, customizable video templates, stock video and audio libraries, and screen recorders. It is particularly popular with online marketers who can use it to compile video presentations or promos and choose from a variety of different output styles and aspect ratios for posting on social media. The platform has more than 17 million registered users and has served more than 390,000 companies to date. Moreover, Clipchamp has raised over USD 15 million in funding. Through the acquisition, Microsoft aims to improve its offerings in the video editing space, noting that Clipchamp is a “natural fit” in extending Microsoft 365’s cloud-based productivity features.