Microsoft Expands Office 365 with the Launch of Bookings, a New Appointment Scheduling Service

Microsoft has announced the introduction of Bookings, a new feature for its Office 365 cloud service designed to make scheduling appointments an easier and more efficient process.

Launched yesterday, Bookings aims to simplify how users schedule, cancel or re-schedule appointments online. Amidst a myriad of scheduling services, Microsoft seeks to stand out by leveraging its large existing user base. As of April 2016, Office 365 was in use by over 60 million commercial users, a number that continues to grow.

The most advantageous aspect of this new service is its potential to save time and reduce costs by eliminating the need for third-party appointment tools. The integration of Bookings into the Office 365 dashboard ensures a seamless user experience and effortless navigation.

The creators of Bookings have recognized the risk of individuals forgetting their appointments, so the feature will automatically update any newly added or altered appointments on your calendar as well as your staff’s calendars. Furthermore, this robust system is not limited to the Outlook calendar in Office 365, it’s also compatible with Outlook.com and Google calendars, ensuring a broad user base can utilize its potential.

Bookings provides businesses with a unique web interface for both mobile and desktop. From this platform, customers can select dates based on your availability. Following the booking, the system will issue reminders for both parties until the set appointment time or in the case of cancellation.

Expanding its utility as your business grows, Bookings allows for the addition of more staff and booking pages. It is not restricted only to Office 365 users. The service is currently available to customers who subscribe to the Office 365 Business Premium plan and is set to roll out to all Business Premium customers worldwide in the coming months. Once deployed, anyone with a Business Premium subscription can use Bookings via the app launcher within the Office 365 web interface.

This development is an example of Microsoft’s aggressive push into the Cloud. CEO Satya Nadella has never been discrete about his ambitions in capturing a significant share of the Cloud market. Microsoft continues to make strategic acquisitions, like that of LinkedIn, in a bid to expand its cloud service.

Microsoft’s latest earnings report released two days ago further emphasizes the company’s successful strides in the Cloud sector. Microsoft’s revenue beat expectations, totaling $22.6 billion against a Wall Street expectation of $22.14 billion. Notably, Cloud revenue rose to $6.7 billion while Azure revenue saw a 120% year-over-year increase.

These numbers reflect the growing popularity and potential of Cloud offerings, with significant boosts in revenue reported in the areas of Office commercial and consumer products, Dynamics products, and Azure.

Summary highlights of the earnings report show:

– Office commercial products and cloud services revenue rose by 5%, driven by a 54% growth in Office 365 commercial revenue.
– Office consumer products and cloud services revenue increased by 19% with Office 365 consumer subscribers now totaling 23.1 million.
– Dynamics products and cloud services witnessed a growth of 6% with Dynamics CRM Online paid seats seeing more than 2.5 times growth year-over-year.

Featuring prominently in the report’s business highlights is the growth of enterprise mobility customers, who nearly doubled to over 33,000. Additionally, the installed base grew almost 2.5 times in size from the previous year.

While revenue from More Personal Computing declined by 4% to $8.9 billion, Xbox Live’s monthly active users increased, reaching 49 million, along with other areas of growth.

With continued advancements, Microsoft’s commitment to Cloud technology’s potential becomes increasingly clear. With the addition of Bookings and future potential integration of Cloud services into LinkedIn’s user base of over 430 million, Microsoft is proving that the Cloud pays.