Microsoft Teams turns seven today – another milestone for the platform that's transformed how we work since its general release on 14 March 2017.
Microsoft surging to the top of a new market is hardly surprising, but few could have predicted Teams’ impact over the past seven years.
Now encompassing everything from video and AI assistants to contact centre functionality and virtual reality meetings, it’s hard to remember a time when Teams ‘just’ a chat app.
But that’s pretty much how even Microsoft described it way back in 2017: “A chat-based workspace.”
Microsoft (publicly, at least) planned for Teams to sit alongside other applications.
“Office 365 is designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group with purpose-built, integrated applications: Outlook for enterprise-grade email; SharePoint for intelligent content management; Yammer for networking across the organisation; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; and now, Microsoft Teams,” Microsoft said in a blog at the time.
However, it has since gone on to, to a greater or lesser extent, swallow these other applications.
Where Office 365 was originally the sun, orbited by other applications, Teams now sits at the centre of Microsoft’s workplace universe.
However, its beginnings were humble, and even mocked by its then-greatest competitor, Slack.
Dear Microsoft
Back in 2016, Slack was way out in front when it came to workplace chat, vowing to kill off email once and for all.
Slack’s execs pushed it as a modern, agile alternative to the stuffy enterprise communications software pushed by the likes of Cisco and even Microsoft - which had Lync and then Skype for Business.
The competitive landscape changed on 2 November 2016 when Microsoft revealed Teams.
Slack’s fear was evident for all to see – notably after it published a misguided advertorial in the New York Times titled ‘Dear Microsoft’ on launch day.
Lines like
“We’re genuinely excited to have some competition”
and
“It’s validating to see you’ve come around to the same way of thinking”
and
“We’re glad you’re going to be helping us define this new product category”
were as transparent as they were fearful, and had the opposite effect to what Slack intended.
Functionality aside, Microsoft had something Slack didn’t. Something as contentious today as it was then. A huge customer base.
Bundled in
Teams’ success has been built on the foundations of Microsoft’s existing Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) customer base.
