Big News You May Have Missed

Popular stories from the last week that you may have missed

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UC Today News Round Up
Unified Communications

Published: August 10, 2020

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

It’s hard to believe it, but we’re stepping into the first week of August, and Autumn is just around the corner. As we continue to explore one of the most overwhelming years in recent history, the communication and collaboration industries have never been hotter.

In the past seven days, we’ve seen plenty of new updates from the industry, including Cisco and Freeform Dynamics working together on a report about the new workforce. Elsewhere, companies are already planning ahead to support businesses in the age of the “new normal”.

If you haven’t had a chance to read all of our stories from the last week, here are some of the reports that you don’t want to miss.

Microsoft Ditches Free Calling Plan

Towards the end of July 2020, Microsoft released an announcement saying it would be giving the top Office 365 users in 8 countries access to 120 minutes of free calling per month. This new service is set to appear in 8 countries, with people in Puerto Rico and the US missing out. Just a couple of weeks after getting clients excited, Microsoft backtracked, and decided to forget all about the deal.

The Microsoft team published a new post on its website, telling partners that it would not be enterprising. It’s Enterprise Voice and A5/E5 solution with free calling minutes, thanks to “rapidly-evolving” conditions in the market. Right now, it’s unclear whether this much-appreciated feature will ever launch. Learn more about the U-turn here.

Freeform Dynamics and Cisco Join Forces

Cisco has long been on the forefront of the modern workforce, constantly introducing new solutions to help people work more efficiently together. Now that the landscape is evolving at an incredible pace following COVID-19, Cisco has decided to work alongside Freeform Dynamics on a new study into the changing landscape.

The recent report introduces a host of essential lessons for businesses to uncover in their new environment. Cisco and Freeform Dynamics have offered a selection of suggestions for companies that are keen to learn what business agility and workplace productivity means for the office of tomorrow. Check out the insights here.

Reviewing Cisco Webex Assistant for Meetings

As the remote landscape continues to transform the way that we work, video and web-based meetings are becoming increasingly essential. These solutions make it easier for us to connect with people all around the world – even when we’re stuck in a home office. To make meetings even more convenient, Cisco, a leader in the UC&C environment, decided to introduce Webex Assistant.

The Assistant solution offers a fantastic voice recognition experience intended to help with things like note taking and other crucial tasks during a meeting. Rob Scott joined forces with Jonathan George, Digital collaboration leader at Adoptt, and Cisco Webex Pro to find out more. Watch the all-access video here.

Element Wins Incredible New Deal

A rival to collaboration tools like Slack, Element, recently announced an incredible new software deal, sure to take the company to the next level. Element announced this week that it had earned the largest contract ever created for collaboration software. The Element team will be supplying half a million licenses to the German education market.

This record-breaking deal completely overshadows similar contracts won by competing companies. According to the CEO of Element, Europe is in the midst of embracing a new privacy-first approach to collaboration and messaging in the workplace. Companies everywhere are looking for reliable ways to reduce reliance on Silicon Valley tech, and Element can help with this. Read the full report here.

Twilio Summer Highlights

Towards the middle of July, SDK and API company, Twilio, announced that it had learned about a recent defect in one of its SDKs. The company made the public aware of this problem with a blog post, explaining that the TaskRouter JS SDK was experiencing problems. The misconfiguration in the technology meant that people were being exposed to Magecart attacks.

Twilio announced that within minutes of becoming aware of the attack, product and security teams were working together to fix the issue. An hour later, the CPaaS expert said that it had replaced the damaged library and confirmed that no data from customers was at risk. Check out the story here.

 

What was your favourite UC and collaboration story from the last week? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or get in touch on social media.

 

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