微軟Office 365剛剛達到了一個里程碑

Amy Hood, Microsoft』s chief financial officer, said Thursday during a conference call for the company』s latest earnings that its Office 365 online workplace tools brought in more revenue than the traditional version of Office that』s installed on people』s computers.

This is noteworthy because Microsoft, like many other legacy business software vendors including Adobe, has been shifting from selling software that people own and download, to selling monthly or annual subscriptions for online software.

More companies are turning to a so-called subscription-as-a-service model that has been popularized by companies like Salesforce, which provides its sales software to customers from its own data centers. Besides helping customers to better predict future revenue, it also lets them more easily deliver updates and new features and gives them information about how their customers use their products.

Still, Hood didn』t detail the exact sales numbers of its Office 365 and classic Office software suite, which include Word and Excel, among others. Microsoft only said that Office Commercial revenue, which includes both Office 365 and Office, rose 5% year-over-year to $277 million. The company attributed that 5% growth to more subscriptions to Office 365, and not to sales of the traditional edition. Sales of Microsoft's Office Consumer segment grew 13% year-over-year to $99 million, which Microsoft said was due to more people subscribing to the consumer version of Office 365.

Whatever the case, the Office 365 milestone underscores Microsoft』s continued push into cloud computing and it selling software and other services that are delivered from its own data centers. But that focus comes with some growing pains.

For example, Microsoft said earlier this month that it would lay off thousands of salespeople as part of a reorganization. During the call with analysts on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged the layoffs and said that they were part of a broader overhaul.

「This transformation is ongoing and has been happening over multiple years,」 Nadella said.

Hood elaborated further by explaining that the company is trying to recreate the growth of its cloud products in all parts of the business. This means that sales people who have experience selling older products that aren't performing as well are less valuable than in the past.

「We』re taking that learning of the past 18 months and really applying it at a broader scale across the salesforce—to put those resources where we feel confident that they』ll have a good long-term return in that next phase of transformation,」 Hood said.

Microsoft's shares dropped a little under 1 % to $74.00 in after hours trading on Thursday.

在上周四的一場電話會議中，微軟的首席財務官艾米·胡德稱，公司的Office 365在線辦公工具帶來的收入超過了傳統的Office辦公軟體帶來的收入。

這一變化值得關注，因為微軟和許多其他的傳統商業軟體供應商（包括Adobe在內）一樣，已經開始從銷售需要人們自行下載的軟體，轉為銷售在線軟體的按月或按年訂閱服務。

越來越多的公司開始轉向所謂的「訂閱即服務」模式，這種模式已經被Salesforce等公司推廣開來。Salesforce公司向其數據中心的客戶提供銷售軟體。這一模式除了幫助客戶更好地預測未來的收入外，還使得軟體公司能更容易地發布更新和新功能，並為他們提供關於客戶如何使用公司產品的信息。

不過，胡德並未給出Office 365和傳統Office套件（包括Word和Excel等軟體）的具體銷售數據。微軟只表示，Office的商業營收（包括Office 365和Office軟體套件兩者的營收）同比增長5%，達到2.77億美元。該公司將5%的增長歸功於Office 365訂閱量的上升，而不是傳統版本的Office套件帶來的銷售額。同時，微軟Office個人版的銷售額同比增長了13%，達到9900萬美元。微軟也表示，這是因為有更多人訂閱了Office 365的個人版。

無論如何，Office 365取得的里程碑式的成績，都突顯出微軟正在不斷推進雲計算技術的努力，而且微軟銷售的軟體和其它服務也都是以微軟自有的數據中心為基礎的。但是，這個發展方向也帶來了一些「成長的煩惱」。

例如，微軟本月早些時候曾表示，作為重組的一部分，公司將裁掉數千名銷售人員。微軟首席執行官薩蒂亞·納德拉在周四與分析專家的電話會議上承認公司將裁員，並表示這是全面改革的一部分。

納德拉稱 「這一改革已經進行了多年，目前還在進行之中。」

胡德進一步解釋說，公司正試圖在其業務的各個領域中重新推動雲產品的增長。這就意味著，與過去相比，那些銷量欠佳的老產品的銷售人員目前創造的價值下降了。

他說：「我們正努力從過去十八個月的學習中吸取更多的經驗，並將這些經驗應用到更廣泛的範圍中。我們會把資源投入到那些在改革的下一個階段中，會帶來更好的長期回報的軟體中。」

上周四，在開盤幾小時后，微軟股價下跌至74美元，跌幅接近1%。（財富中文網）

譯者：Amelia Huang