Coronavirus sees upsurge in cloud-based working patterns

While united efforts are being made to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, since Monday industrial production and business operation have been resuming gradually. To avoid unnecessary workplace gatherings, however, companies encourage employees to work from home, with the help of cloud office systems.

On the morning of Feb 3, the first working day after the Spring Festival holiday, tens of thousands of WeChat users took advantage of access to the app's conference function. According to Alibaba, China's e-commerce giant, its enterprise app Ding Talk, used by companies as a "smart mobile office", saw nearly 200 million users start to work at home on the same day.

A large number of enterprises officially resumed operation one week later, and the recruitment data of e-commerce company 58.com, showed that 47 percent of companies registered on it resumed operation on that day.

On the cloud office platform, the most used functions are remote conference and document collaboration. In addition, health reporting functions have also been popular at this time.

Due to overload, major office cloud platforms have suffered frequent collapse, forcing operators to continuously improve the platforms' capacity.

Alibaba said it had installed more than 20,000 cloud hosting servers for Ding Talk to cope with rocketing demands of live broadcast and online meeting. From Jan 29 to Feb 6, the Tencent meeting platform had added another 100,000 cloud hosting servers.

Tencent revealed that employees in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen write most documents and attend most online meetings. Yet people in those cities do not spend the most time on online meetings, with users in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong provinces having the longest average use time. The peak online meeting time appears on 9:04 am and 10:03 am.

On Feb 5, Ding Talk surpassed WeChat to be No.1 App downloaded in Apple App Store, the first time an office application to take the lead. Companies in 100 cities are reported to have resumed operation through Ding Talk on Friday.

The Minsheng Securities Research Report said that because of the outbreak, more companies were operating by using remote office systems, and it is an important period for employees to cultivate the habit of using cloud office systems.