NewsUC&C23 Mar 2020 · 4 min read

Big News You May Have Missed

COVID-19 drives demand for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, RingCentral and free video conferencing, collaboration and UC.

What a difference a week makes.

This time seven days ago, we were speculating on the growth of coronavirus and the potential impact that COVID-19 could have on the world. This week, more of the globe’s countries have gone into lock-down, prompting people to work from home and practice social isolation.

As the world continues to endure the tremors of a pandemic, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, communication remains at the heart of many business strategies. After all, now more than ever, we need to stay connected.

Here are our biggest stories from the last week.

The Ultimate Guide to Free Video Conferencing

Stuck at home? We understand. Here at UC Today, we’ve always lived a remote-working lifestyle. However, now that the risks of COVID-19 are greater than ever, more companies are feeling the push to discover the benefits of video conferencing and online collaboration for themselves. If your company is in the midst of a sudden transformation, then it might help to know where you can get your hands on some free tools.

Our ultimate guide to the free video conferencing and collaboration available in the market today covers everything from premium features available for free from Microsoft and Google to solutions from Zoom, RingCentral, Avaya, and more. Come and see which tools you can use to keep your team productive in these unpredictable days.

RingCentral Reveals Fourth Quarter Results

The world might be facing the beginning of a potential recession, but for now, business is still thriving. That’s particularly true for the market leaders in the communication world, like RingCentral. Recently, the company revealed its fourth-quarter results for the period ending on the 31^st of December 2019. The company, known for its sensational collaboration and cloud communication tools, achieved a total revenue increase of 34%!

According to the CEO and Founder of RingCentral, Vlad Shmunis, the fourth-quarter results are outstanding, driven by the continued momentum of sales in both mid-market and enterprise environments. RingCentral also seeing the benefits of various strategic partnerships with companies like Avaya and AT&T. Check out the results for yourself here.

Microsoft Teams Stumbles When Users Need it Most

Just as the number of remote workers relying on such tools began to swell, Microsoft Teams, the leader in team collaboration applications, hit a significant outage. As millions attempted to log in from home to continue work while on coronavirus-lockdown, Microsoft Teams failed to deliver results for workers in the US landscape.

As usual, with a case like this, the Microsoft group took to Twitter, sharing that it had received reports about an issue with “TM206544”. The company investigated the issue, while, in the meantime, Europe started to suffer from major outages as well. Although the Microsoft Teams app was back up and running by the end of the day, it was seriously bad news for Microsoft, as the company failed to prove itself at a time when its customers were most in need.

Microsoft Reveals New Updates

Fortunately, not all of the news from Microsoft has been bad over the last week. The company also introduced a range of new features and updates to delight the influx of new and existing customers on the platform. Microsoft revealed some significant changes to Teams Chat, Calling, and Collaboration features, including the option to assign specific tags to entire groups of people at once.

Teams also introduced some changes for Admins too, with a new “manage apps” page that gives administrators an excellent view of all the apps in their Microsoft tenant. Admins can also now place “legal hold” on conversations for compliance and auditing purposes. Check out the full range of updates to the Microsoft Teams experience here.

Unified Comms Challenges, Trends, and Opportunities

General Manager of Network and Communications at Zen Internet, James Albiges, submitted a fantastic guest post to the UC Today community recently. In this blog, James talks about the concept of unified communications, and how it has changed drastically over the years. Since originally emerging in the 1990s, the definition of unified communications has evolved to include everything from video, to recording and more.

In his guest post, Albiges talks about the complications of installing unified comms technology into the current landscape, as well as the challenges that teams face when it comes to choosing the services and solutions that their teams need. Read through the insightful article for yourself here.

Which story was your favourite from this week? Let us know in the comments below or chat to us on social media. Remember, you can still check out UC Today or visit our UC Summit while taking part in social distancing too!

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