Microsoft's productivity application Kaizala is now available globally after the company tested the product in India, Philippines and Kenya.

Kaizala is a mobile chat application for businesses and can allow groups to be created within groups filtering participants according to the targeted audience of the administrator.

The application also allows users to send out messaging, polls and survey questions, geo-locate teams and manage company data within the chat application.

Integrated with the Office 365 suit, the application can tap into other business apps such as Power BI for analytics and insights.

The application can integrate small teams to over 1 million people and beyond in one chat application, without the resulting over-messaging, currently experienced within the public chat apps such as WhatsApp and Viber.

"This is the very first mobile first application and product by Microsoft. It is designed for mobile workers, citizens and customers and we get to connect this special group of people to the productivity world," said Amr Kamel, Country General Manager, Microsoft East and Southern Africa.

Kamel said the company has invested heavily to ensure that the chat application is secured and offers enterprise grade security. The application is also made for emerging markets where 2G is still the dominant frequency and can work offline.

Microsoft is now looking to add more mobile friendly applications as they forecast that over 6 billion people will have smartphones in the next 3 to 5 years, while only 1 billion will still work with desktops.

Rajiv Kumar, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group at Microsoft lauded Kenya's foray into mobile money payments as a step in the right direction for innovation.

"I think India can learn a lot from Kenya as the leader in digital transaction," Kumar said.

"If you look at Philippines, India and Kenya, majority of the people have smartphones. A small segment of the population has desktops, so people are using their phones to get their work done. Kaizala as a product in any of these three countries fit the need of the people who are on the go," Kumar said.

According to the latest Communication Authority report, Kenya's internet penetration is currently over 100% and the majority of connections are from mobile internet.