Big UC News from Microsoft, Google, Avaya, GoTo, and Office Today

Some not-to-miss highlights from the last week in unified communications 

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Published: August 12, 2022

James Stephen

Technology Journalist

From Barclays deploying Microsoft Teams and Avaya’s fight to survive to a new CEO at GoTo, here are extracts from popular news stories this week. 

Barclays Bank Deploys Microsoft Teams Worldwide

Microsoft has announced that Barclays Bank will make Microsoft Teams the preferred collaboration platform for its employees globally.  

The British universal bank has entered into multi-year agreements with Microsoft, which represents one of the biggest Teams deployments in the financial sector.  

Over 120,000 employees and service partners around the world will have access to Teams, which Microsoft believes will improve their connectivity. Teams will also be replacing a number of point solutions, helping to streamline communications and collaboration at Barclays.  

Craig Bright, Global Chief Information Officer at Barclays, said: “Modern technology is essential to enabling our employees to deliver the highest level of service to our customers in a way that is resilient and sustainable.  

“Microsoft Teams gives us an end-to-end collaboration platform that helps us connect our colleagues and enhance our business capabilities.”

In order to ensure employees are effectively connected across its business, Barclays and Microsoft have worked together to deploy Teams across the company. 

Introducing Office Today: UC Today’s New Sister Title 

Here at Today Digital, we commit day in and day out to sharing insights, news, and valuable content with readers across the globe. 

Our publications are the go-to information hub for our communities in Unified Communications (UC Today), Extended Reality (XR Today), and Customer Experience (CX Today). 

To reflect the boom in digital productivity and employee experience, we have launched our new publication, Office Today. 

It will be dedicated to strategic thinkers and tech professionals involved in the Microsoft 365 application stack and ecosystem. 

With over 270 million Microsoft Teams users worldwide — a 86% increase from the previous year — the Microsoft 365 landscape has emerged as the essential hub for education, business productivity, communication, and collaboration. 

Rob Scott, the publisher at Today Digital, has outlined the new magazine’s objectives: “From a technology perspective, we’ll be focusing on the Microsoft 365 stack, in particular its Office apps, enterprise collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams, task and project management tools, business apps such as my analytics and the power platform. 

“And then as much as possible, the most relevant hardware devices that underpin the digital workplace such as Microsoft’s own Surface devices and of course the wider catalogue of 3rd party vendor solutions. 

“We want to stay focused on adding value, rather than just adding to the Microsoft content already available on the internet nowadays, so we’ve identified a number of initial trends and topics, like employee experience, digital productivity, workflow automation and, of course, hybrid work, to get us started.

“These are getting lots of attention right now as companies continue to tackle the changing landscape of business in this post-pandemic world.” 

Office Today will cover the Microsoft 365 landscape by hosting and sharing videos and interviews with notable figures from within the sector while keeping readers in the loop on the most significant events in the workplace calendar. 

Can Avaya Survive a Second Time? 

Avaya has endured a number of financial and internal upsets, which could spell the beginning of the end.   

The communication and collaboration platform’s revenues have declined for the past year, dropping from $732 million to $577 million.   

The news of Avaya’s struggling financial situation came at around the same time as the company’s decision to ‘remove’ CEO Jim Chirico.   

The new CEO and President of Avaya, Alan Masarek, released a statement alongside the additional preliminary Q3 results, which said: 

“Our preliminary financial results for the quarter reflect operational and execution shortcomings, amplified against the backdrop of a volatile economic environment.

“We are taking aggressive actions to right-size Avaya’s cost structure to align with our contractual, recurring revenue business model.”   

Avaya’s share price has been following suit, dropping over 90 per cent since the start of last year.   

The company has now announced its Q3 revenues have sunk by 20 per cent year-over-year. Its share price fell by 37.5% the same day.   

As if things couldn’t get any worse at the Avaya camp, the $600 million deal that the company struck with lenders, clients of Goldman and JP Morgan, may have been done under false pretences. 

Google Meet Enables YouTube and Spotify Live Sharing 

Google Meet has launched live sharing to enable meeting participants to co-watch content in real-time.   

Together, participants will be able to watch YouTube videos, listen to Spotify and create playlists, or play games such as Heads Up! and Uno! Mobile.   

Live sharing was made available on Duo earlier in the year and, following the merger between Duo and Meet, the feature has now been released on Google Meet as well.   

Dave Citron, Director of Product Management at Google Duo & Google Meet, said: “As we announced in June, we’re upgrading the Google Duo experience to include all Google Meet features and bringing our two video calling services together into a single solution.   

“This upgrade, which started rolling out last month, gives everyone access to new features like scheduling and joining meetings, virtual backgrounds, in-meeting chat and more, in addition to your current video calling features. 

“We’re also launching live sharing for Google Meet. Live sharing allows all meeting participants to interact with the content that’s being shared.”   

The new Live sharing feature will be located in a new Activities tab via the three-dot menu, which is also home to Q7A and polls. 

GoTo Appoints New CEO to Accelerate Innovation and Growth 

Executive Officer. 

According to the company, Srinivasan has been the driving force behind its recent transformation and platform unification. 

The appointment was made to accelerate growth and innovation within the small to medium business (SMB) space. 

Srinivasan commented: “SMBs are entering yet another crucial moment in the health of their businesses, and at GoTo, we are uniquely positioned to help them stay connected with who matters most – their employees and customers. 

“I am incredibly proud of the work our teams have done to accelerate GoTo on our mission to make IT easy.

“I am excited for all that is ahead as we work with our partners to help our customers navigate obstacles while protecting their most essential connections and revenue.” 

Srinivasan has 25 years of product and leadership experience which have been centred around driving technologies forward to meet daily and future challenges.

 

 

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