Late in July, Microsoft announced it would give its top Office 365 users in eight countries 120-minutes per month for domestic calling at no extra cost. Set for availability in eight countries, US users and those in Puerto Rico were excluded. Weeks after getting folks excited, Microsoft wrote on its site, telling partners it would not outfit its Enterprise Voice and E5/A5 with 120 free domestic calling minutes, “Due to rapidly-evolving market conditions.” It is unclear if the feature will ever launch, but a spokesperson for Microsoft said:
“We make updates to our price lists well in advance of any changes to give our customers visibility so they can plan. Given the fact that we engage with customers and partners to confirm offerings and understand their needs, we’ve readjusted based on their feedback”
Microsoft continued, adding, customers should leverage its direct routing offering. Tom Arbuthnot, Principal Solutions Architect, Modality Systems, and Microsoft Certified Master/MVP, wrote on his popular Tom Talks blog: “The market must be very fast-evolving, indeed, to have changed in a matter of weeks.” Customers around the globe would have benefitted from the free offering. The people who sell these minutes, such as partners, and resellers, however, Arbuthnot added, likely weren’t happy with the move to give away 120 free calling minutes. Could this have prompted the collaboration giant to nix the rollout?
Microsoft does not know if the feature will ever get released, but said it will continue to assess market and sales data to see if the launch will go on as planned. Arbuthnot chimed in here, telling readers on his blog: “I don’t think it’s delayed, it’s canceled. Whatever ‘market conditions’ that caused the retraction of the offering are unlikely to change.”
Microsoft also said it would cancel the launch of its Microsoft 365 Enterprise Voice SKUs, which were to include a phone system, PSTN audio conferencing, and domestic calling plans under a single license. These too, will likely never see the light of day. The collaboration giant did say it would still roll out its advanced communications license which stands to highly-regulated companies stand to benefit from. This does mean that customers would still have to pay for third-party certified solutions for call recordings, contact center APIs, processing, and more.
COVID-19’s created favorable conditions in the collaboration market for many features to thrive, expressly as more and more users understand the value of having inbound/outbound calling, along with features for front-line workers such as doctors and first-responders. This year at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft launched such capabilities in the form of a new walkie talkie functionality. The company said it would enable the automation of many manual tasks at Inspire 2020, launching a host of other features designed to enhance the ‘Microsoft Teams’ experience for end-users. Check out our recap of Microsoft Inspire 2020.
In under a year (July 31, 2021), Microsoft’s set to retire its ‘Skype for Business’ solution to focus solely on its Microsoft Teams collaboration app. This will likely mean more innovation from one of the world’s foremost leaders in the collaboration space once it has the chance to focus on a single offering only.
