Listen up news fans!
It’s been another amazing week here in Unified Communications, Collaboration, and CX world, and that means more exciting stories from the team at UC Today.
This week, we’ve seen the release of a slew of exciting new features for Microsoft Teams, as well as the launch of a CCaaS platform for Avaya, following the company’s recent decision to partner with RingCentral.
Zoom’s shaking things up with new conferencing appliances, and everywhere, the communication space continues to evolve at a break-neck pace. If you haven’t had a chance to track all the stories from this week, here are some of the top options to check out.
Microsoft Teams Delivers Brand-New Features
Microsoft isn’t a company that likes to sit on its laurels – particularly when it comes to collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams. The company recently celebrated the beginning of Autumn (Fall) with a slew of exciting new changes to the Teams roadmap, including some major collaboration and chat updates.
Microsoft now gives users the option to easily search for the conversations that matter more to them with a simple set of search filters. What’s more, there’s the option to mute conversations in a channel if you’re tired of getting notifications every two minutes. Microsoft Teams have also upgraded their calling solution, to implement a new cloud voicemail strategy that allows users to transfer calls straight to voicemail when they’re not available. Check out more of the latest features in our story here.
Avaya Launches New UC Features and CCaaS Platform
Things might be cooling down this side of the equator weather-wise, but they’re certainly heating up for Avaya. During GITEX, the largest technology exhibition and conference in the Middle East, Avaya announced a host of updates to its UC platform, as well as the arrival of a new CCaaS platform. Alongside exciting information about the upcoming partnership with RingCentral, Avaya talked about the arrival of a cloud-native contact centre as a service platform to deliver more flexible deployment options to customers.
Interestingly, the new CCaaS solution will be available on Azure and hosted in the Microsoft cloud data centres within Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the Gulf region. Avaya has also confirmed that the CCaaS offering will be expanded globally in the months to come.
RingCentral and Avaya: Causing UCC Consolidation
Avaya’s partnership with RingCentral has been one of the biggest topics of conversation in the UCC market lately, and for good reason. According to the Founder, Lead Analyst and CEO of Aragon Research, Jim Lundy, the new collaboration could be a sign of increasing consolidation in the UCC space. Following an analysis of the new partnership, Lundy published a blog talking about the new era of alliances that may soon begin in the UCC space.
Avaya and RingCentral certainly have a lot to gain from their new collaboration, but it seems as though this consolidation could have a lot to say about the changing nature of the marketplace too. Check out our full review of the Aragon Research analysis here.
Zoom Shakes Things Up with Conferencing Appliances
It’s an exciting time for UCC conferences right now. Not only do we have GITEX in the Middle East, but there’s also Zoomtopia over in California to consider too. As part of the Zoomtopia annual partner conference, Zoom announced the arrival of a variety of exciting new purpose-built applications to simplify the management and installation of large-scale room deployments.
Zoom Room Appliances are designed to give today’s users the best of both worlds when it comes to things like speaker tracking, scene framing, noise cancellation, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about the fantastic range of functional tools now available from Zoom.
Avaya Update the IX Workplace
It seems like Avaya is definitely the company to talk about this week. The company’s name is everywhere, particularly for visitors at GITEX, who can’t stop talking about the upcoming collaboration between RingCentral and Avaya. However, there’s something else worth discussing that Avaya announced at this year’s event, and that’s the arrival of new enhancements to the Avaya IX Workplace – the solution now designed to take over from Equinox.
Avaya’s UC client will be getting a range of new innovations to help business users accomplish even more from within a single easy-to-use environment. Check out our interview with Savio Tovar Dias here to find out more.
What were your favourite stories this week? Let us know in the comments or join the conversation on social media!
