Enterprise Connect 2017 Orlando: It’s all about Teams

It’s all about Teams this year at #EC17

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Unified Communications

Published: March 30, 2017

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

Wednesday was day three of this year’s Enterprise Connect conference, and it brought with it plenty of buzz about team collaboration, with keynotes from Google and Microsoft! However, before we began the keynotes for the day, Beth Schultz, the conference co-chair took the stage to announce the winner for the “Best of Enterprise Connect” award: Cisco, for their Spark board 55 interactive collaboration solution.

The fact that the winning product this year is so deeply integrated with team collaboration says quite a lot about how the industry has evolved, and where it might be going next. After all, this line of services and products only started to emerge a couple of years ago, but by now, it’s taken off to the level that every major communication systems vendor has its own team collaboration solution.

Following the presentation of the award, executives from Ring Central, Microsoft, Atlassian, Unify, and Cisco took to the stage with Beth for the upcoming panel session, which was called: “Messaging and Team Collaboration: Overhyped, or the next platform?” The session was an exciting one, with lots of questions issued by the audience.

The Experience and Team Collaboration

A recurring theme from Enterprise Connect this year, the concept of experience became a key talking point on Wednesday, with many people agreeing that experience has become their core reasoning behind their product strategies. Dan Stevenson from Microsoft, the group manager for Teams, made the point that the components of a successful collaboration app could be linked to portfolio, platform, and experience. At the same time, RingCentral’s Kira Makagon, the EVP of innovation, drew attention to the importance of making the tool more accessible for end-users.

Productivity is a Team Sport, says Google

When the discussion began about the integration between these team collaboration tools taken from different vendors, Richard Townhill from Cisco, the product manager and senior director, suggested that users would always find a new way to do what they needed to do, pointing to APIs as crucial in allowing users to integrate the things they need to work together. He noted that technology is in a constant state of evolution, and people are always using different tools. If the need to interoperate or integrate emerges, users almost always find a way to make that happen.

After the panel, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Office 365, Ron Markezich, took to the stage to deliver his keynote. This week, Microsoft made many announcements linked to Skype for Business, which the company defines as the backbone for the video and voice meetings of Office 365. Additionally, the Teams solution became generally available two weeks ago, and Markezich brought a few colleagues together on stage to talk the audience through a demonstration of the new tool.

Markezich commented that companies will be spending around $1.2 trillion on initiatives for digital transformation this year. With the evolution of Skype for Business, Office 365, and now Teams, Microsoft will be working to deliver solutions for people who need to complete work more efficiently. At this stage, the business has shipped over 100 new features for such solutions in the last year, and Microsoft are focusing heavily on solutions to help companies transform.

Skype for Business has more than 85 million paid active users, says Microsoft

Google on the Keynote Stage

Google was the next big name to take the stage, with Scott Johnston, the director for real-time communication. The charge was led by G-Suite from Google Cloud, and Johnston spoke about the complexities of productivity, commenting on how new tools continue to emerge, but how difficult it is to understand if those tools really help the modern worker. To better understand the ways in which teams’ work, Google created a study called “Project Aristotle”, to determine how much work is spent on moving people around a board.

Johnston commented that ideas are crucial to companies, and that most businesses spend too much of their time on mundane tasks. Sometimes, productivity tools can waste time, and it gets more confusing when you add more people into that equation, and look at teamwork. Google is now placing their focus on helping teams accomplish business goals more efficiently, and the group demonstrated the enterprise services announced early this month, Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet.

Productivity is a Team Sport, says Google

Hangouts Meet represents Google’s approach to team collaboration, which has evolved from the Hangouts solution of old, to provide a greater push towards experiences that help to connect groups and teams together and keep work progressing. As Johnston continued to explain, the goal with this new solution was to reduce the friction of teamwork, making it a one-click solution for meetings with instant loading and optimised audio and video.

Johnston outlined that people in meetings need to get work done, and he introduced the audience to “Google Jamboard”, a new whiteboard device for team collaboration that will begin to take orders in May.

Closing Wednesday

It’s worth noting that the buzz around team collaboration at Enterprise Connect this year isn’t limited to the stage. In fact, there have been conversations everywhere you go in the conference. With Monday, ShoreTel announced their real-time collaboration tool Teamwork, and on Wednesday, we learned more from CafeX about their collaboration solution “Chime Spaces“.

UK Team Collaboration Software vendors include:

  • Microsoft Teams
  • Cisco Spark
  • Google Meet
  • RingCentral Glip
  • BroadSoft Team-One
  • 8×8 Sameroom.io
  • Slack
  • Mitel MiTeam
  • Unify Circuit
  • Alcatel Lucent Enterprise – Rainbow
  • Avaya Zang Spaces
Digital TransformationMicrosoft Teams
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