If there’s one amazing, long-awaited event that the Covid-19 era brought about, it was breaking the stranglehold of the traditional, in the office, 9am to 5pm schedule.
The magnitude of the situation was what truly perpetuated this transition. However, it would never have been possible without several notable technology players that stepped up to make this possible, and arguably the most beneficial, was Microsoft.
Before the Covid pandemic, Microsoft Teams was simply a leading app based primarily on personal and group communication. The true value only reveled itself when we experienced the ramifications to the workplace, did we realize what was important, and what could be accomplished through a “Unified” approach to communication and collaboration. Unified in this case, meaning one platform that handles literally everything, through a familiar interface that works for all hybrid, remote and even on-site workers.
Throughout this pandemic era of 2020, communication and collaboration through Microsoft Teams saw unparalleled growth as companies rushed to provide for functionality to remote workers.
As these developmental stages took place, the timing strangely and ideally coincided with the already growing acceptance and use of the cloud.
Notions of Unified Communications (UC), especially VoIP and traditional telephony, began to be examined regarding efficiency, usefulness, and providing the same user experience across multiple channels.
More of a long-term trend, UC has shown continuous benefits to businesses, employees, partners, and vendors in a true global setting. Results and feedback show consistent, uniform, and better experiences for everyone, while at the same time lowering costs and improving reliability. Videoconferencing is one thing, there’s a handful of reliable programs that have been doing that for decades. True collaboration is quite another, here’s my joke again, “Do you know what integrates with Zoom?” Nothing………
One thing that you’d expect from a company like Microsoft, is the continued updating and scalability of their products. And nowhere is this more apparent, than in Microsoft Teams. Makes sense. But it’s the advancements that should get the most acclaim, so beyond the expected ecosystem partner news and interesting partnerships with Poly and Dell, EPOS and AudioCodes, Bose and Lenovo, here is what you can expect very, very soon (which is very exciting to those of us who spend all day in Teams).
Here’s what’s coming up in Teams Room and Device news:
• Sennheiser announced they will join EPOS and Yealink in the intelligent speaker category with an AI-enabled speaker!
• A new dedicated 24-inch display standalone Teams device was announced by Yealink, the deskVision AIO24.
• Poly announced their updated Room Kits for Microsoft Teams Rooms.
• Evolve2 75 was launched by Jabra.
• The Logitech Tap Scheduler Teams panel was unveiled.
