Welcome to our weekly round up of the latest news coming from the UC&C space!
This week saw another twist in the ongoing Zoom-RingCentral legal drama, analyst house Gartner released this year’s much-anticipated CCaaS Magic Quadrant, and Microsoft acquired a company to improve the quality of streaming on the Teams platform.
The Zoom-RingCentral Legal Battle Continues
The legal tussle between the two vendors continues as the latest court documents lay out the position of each party.
As a reminder, the battle centres on the RingCentral Meetings (RCM) platform, which was introduced seven years ago and is powered by Zoom technology. However, RingCentral has since released its Video offering which it intends to push ahead of the Zoom-powered offering. Concurrently, Zoom has moved to cancel the partnership.
In a statement sent to UC Today, Zoom’s outside counsel, Doug Lumish of Latham & Watkins, said:
“If RingCentral truly believes in their own technology, they should use it”
Both parties are gathering evidence for their respective cases and expect to have this no later than 25 August 2021.
The issue of whether Zoom will be legally required to service RCM customers after the end of the agreement is expected to be expedited because of its time-sensitive nature. However, if this cannot be resolved quickly, the duo is expected to ask for a full trial no later than May 2022.
Who’s Leading the Charge in CCaaS?
Gartner this week published its annual Magic Quadrant for CCaaS which ranks the Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players in the space.
Surprisingly, not much had changed from last year’s edition, bar one notable dropping.
This year’s touchstone report from the analyst house noted that demand for CCaaS has been spurred on by the pandemic and that demand is moving “upmarket” as the offerings are increasingly being used to meet complex and multiregional requirements.
Microsoft Aims to Improve Teams Streaming
The tech giant acquired the Peer5 video platform to enhance live streaming on Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft said that many of its customers have asked it for a more integrated Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) over the course of the pandemic.
Nicole Herskowitz, General Manager of Microsoft Teams, said in a blog post:
“We’re excited to announce that we have acquired Peer5 to expand our ability for delivering secure, high-quality, large-scale live video streaming with optimized network performance in Teams”
“The technology does not require additional installation on user endpoints or changes to the physical network infrastructure.”
Zoom’s Outlook on the Future of Work
The video conferencing vendor this week revealed its vision for what the future of work might look like.
In a blog post, Zoom stated that it’s impossible to fully predict the future of today’s world, but there are some trends shaping our current reality that could indicate what the years ahead might hold.
These trends include flexibility towards employees’ needs, consistency, and listening to teams in your organisation.
What’s New in Teams for August?
Microsoft MVP, Tom Arbuthnot, spoke with UC Today’s Tom Wright to discuss the latest happenings in the Microsoft Teams space this month.
The pair discussed Teams’ 250 million monthly active users, the preview of Teams on Windows 11, “Music Mode”, and more.
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