Over the past several weeks, all of us have come together to battle the global health pandemic. During this time, organizations around the world are adjusting the way they manage their daily work and how their workforce continues in the face of extraordinary changes to their professional and personal lives.
With this blog we wanted to share a bit about what we have learned over the last few weeks, resources to help organizations manage through these times, support for critical first responders and emergency organizations, and the criteria we have put in place to manage cloud services capacity to support critical operations.
We will continue to communicate regularly and openly, so you can have insight into what we are seeing, learning and doing.
As companies operationalize to address new and unique challenges, we have mobilized our global response plan to help customers stay up and running during this critical time. We are actively monitoring performance and usage trends 24/7 to ensure we are optimizing our services for customers worldwide, while accommodating new demand. We are working closely with first responder organizations and critical government agencies to ensure we are prioritizing their unique needs and providing them our fullest support. We are also partnering with governments around the globe to ensure our local datacenters have on-site staffing and all functions are running properly.
In response to health authorities emphasizing the importance of social distancing, we are supporting many large-scale corporations, schools, and governments in the mobilization of remote workforces. Microsoft Teams is helping millions of people adapt to remote work. Organizations have been using Dynamics 365 Customer Service to help contact center employees provide consistent, personalized support while working remotely. Ensuring government and organizational functions can continue while keeping safe distances is critical to our society today.
As demand continues to grow, if we are faced with any capacity constraints in any region during this time, we have established clear criteria for the priority of new cloud capacity. Top priority will be going to first responders, health and emergency management services, critical government infrastructure organizational use, and ensuring remote workers stay up and running with the core functionality of Teams. We will also consider adjusting free offers, as necessary, to ensure support of existing customers.
We will continue to communicate with customers proactively and transparently about our cloud policies through the Microsoft Trust Center and we are committed to supporting every customer through this difficult period.
These are certainly unprecedented and challenging times. It is not business as usual. But, together, we can and will get through this. We will be back in touch soon. In the meantime, if you have any immediate questions or needs, please refer to the following resources.
- Azure Service Health – for tracking and understanding your Azure service health
- Microsoft 365 Service health and continuity – tools and resources for understanding your Microsoft 365 service health
