Welcome back to another weekly roundup of our top stories for the week.
There’s been plenty of buzz in the unified communication, collaboration, and customer experience landscape in the last seven days. Slack and Microsoft Teams embraced the option of Cisco Webex calling for team collaboration users.
Microsoft also introduced a wide selection of new WFH features, while Five9 accelerated its global presence with new business growth strategies.
If you haven’t had a chance to keep up with everything, here are some of the most-read stories from the week.
Slack and Microsoft Teams Offer Cisco Calling
Cisco’s Product Manager, Bryan Morris, recently released a blog post about new opportunities for companies to take their meetings to the next level with Cisco calling. The Webex unified app offers a comprehensive meeting, messaging, and calling solution for today’s business leaders. However, some companies still want to unlock the functionality of Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Since neither Slack nor Microsoft Teams have the best history with calling capabilities, the addition of Cisco calling to their platforms will be an exciting update. Users can now use Slack and Microsoft Teams with enterprise-level calling straight from Cisco. The result is a top-level business phone service, combined with your preferred collaboration tool.
Pexip vs Zoom: Which is Best?
As companies continue to embrace team collaboration and video conferencing solutions to encourage better work-from-home productivity, we’ve been putting market leaders to the test. There are tons of VCaaS and collaboration apps out there to choose from, which makes narrowing your selection crucial. This week, we put Pexip and Zoom head-to-head.
While Zoom offers one of the most intuitive video conferencing experiences on the market, complete with virtual backgrounds and hand-raising, Pexip has an extremely secure and reliable platform. Check out how both of these tools measure up on everything from feature sets to user experience and functionality. You’ll be on your way to a confident decision in no time.
Microsoft Teams Introduces New Features
Microsoft Teams is soaring to the head of the pack for collaboration tools lately. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the application has become one of the most popular business tools in the world. In May, Teams announced an impressive 75 million daily active users. To support this onslaught of new customers, Microsoft has been rolling out a variety of features to help teams feel connected.
Enhancing the work from home environment, Teams introduced a new “Together Mode”. This fresh feature uses artificial intelligence to place meeting attendees in a room together. You can see yourself sitting alongside all of your colleagues, as though you were in the same auditorium. Learn more about together mode, and other amazing Teams features here.
Five9 Strengthens its Global Presence
Leading communications company, Five9, has big dreams. Anand Chandrasekaran took over the EVP role for Five9 in 2019. Before working at Five9, Anand was responsible for Facebook’s Business Messenger platform. With Anand’s help, Five9 has been working on new opportunities for strategic growth and development.
Over the last 12 months, Five9 has celebrated a massive 41% year over year growth in international revenue. The company has branched out into Toronto, Sydney, Sao Paulo, and London. The scale of Five9’s growth means that the company will be looking to leverage new crucial partnerships. These collaborations will build on the existing connections that Five9 has with companies like Google Cloud.
Microsoft Certifies Cisco SBCs
Another piece of interesting news from Microsoft this week, is that the company certified Cisco’s Session Border Controls for use with Teams. Both the Cisco SBC, and the (CUBE) Cisco Unified Border Element are certified to use with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. According to Tom Arbuthnot, Microsoft MVP, this is big news for the collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft.
Although companies are still waiting for the day that Microsoft Teams rooms can connect directly with Cisco Webex Meetings, the two brands have been operating in closer quarters lately. Cisco will join companies like AudioCodes, Ribbon Communications, MetaSwitch, and Oracle. All of these companies also have phone systems that integrate deeply with the Microsoft Teams app. Learn more about the story here.
What’s your top story from this week? Have we covered it here? Let us know in the comments below or join the conversation on social media.
