Welcome to our round-up of the news making the headlines this week in the UC&C space.
This week saw Microsoft announce that Teams usage has “never been higher” during an earnings call, Slack UK boss Stuart Templeton reveal how the Salesforce merger has affected demand for its platform, and Cisco unveil its augmented reality (AR) platform Webex Hologram.
Microsoft Teams Usage at Record High
CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on a Q1 earnings call this week that Microsoft Teams usage has “never been higher”, although he stopped short of releasing updated figures.
He also revealed that 138 organisations now have over 100,000 users, as well as 3,000 businesses with more than 10,000 users, and spoke candidly about voice functionality in Teams.
“We’re taking share across PSTN, and VoIP,” he said.
“Calls originating from Teams chats increased 50 percent this quarter compared to a year ago. Operator Connect enables organisations to bring their existing service directly into Teams.
“Moving forward, organisations will need a digital fabric that spans organisational boundaries to address key challenges like customer service swarming and supply chain resilience”
Cisco Reveals Webex Hologram
The vendor unveiled its AR platform at its virtual WebexOne event this week. The new product creates real-time, photorealistic holograms of meeting participants. It is hardware agnostic and will be compatible withMagic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens.
Cisco hailed it as an industry first that combines Webex meeting functionality with AR hardware to create immersive 3D holograms.
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration, stated:
“Our mission at Cisco is to empower the three billion digital workers on the planet to participate equally from anywhere in the world.
“Webex Hologram represents a large step toward our mission of delivering a delivering a work experience so seamless that there is no gap between virtual and in-person collaboration”
The vendor also highlighted its efforts in helping define what the future of work looks like, its partnership with Bang & Olufsen, and the reveal of Webex Go.
Zoom Invests in DTEN
Device manufacturer DTEN has received investment from Zoom to “accelerate new product and service innovations”.
DTEN specialises in all-in-one video collaboration hardware, particularly on Zoom Rooms compatibility.
Wei Liu, DTEN founder and CEO, said of the new funding:
“Zoom and DTEN are both dedicated to future-forward technology, seamless user experiences and a relentless pursuit of customer happiness.
“With this investment, DTEN is able to innovate even faster to support and advance the Zoom-connected world”
Slack UK Boss on Salesforce merger
Stuart Templeton spoke with UC Today’s Tom Wright about the opportunities emerging from Salesforce’s acquisition of the collaboration platform.
“There’s a lot of excitement, both internally and with our customers, in the Slack-first customer 360, bringing Salesforce’s products into the Slack experience and really bringing the power of Customer 360 into channels,” he said.
“One of the great things is we’re now part of a bigger organisation with a great deal of mindshare, and hence they’re opening up all sorts of customer opportunities for us”
How Windows 365 Democratises Collaboration
Content+Cloud’s Modern Workplace Product Manager, Dan Coleby, spoke with UC Today’s Marian McHugh about how the newly-launched Windows 365 helps democratise collaboration between an organisations’ employees – from permanent employees to contractors.
“Often organisations have temporary workers or third parties, who sometimes get different levels of access and it’s not a common playing field when it comes to truly collaborating with their colleagues,” he explained.
“[With Windows 365] everyone is effectively receiving the same level of desktop and same level of access through that model. That means I can dip into that cloud PC, I can use those collaboration tools to talk to whoever I need to [in the company] in same way that they are [using those tools], which means that it becomes a very good solution for those different types of personas”
