Big UC News from Microsoft, Slack, Cisco and RingCentral

The Major News of This Year’s Microsoft Ignite

As is tradition, this year’s Microsoft Ignite has featured a colossal range of stories.

First, Microsoft is rebranding Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise as part of Copilot to simplify the user experience. The move intends to make Copilot more accessible for everyone to leverage the tech giant’s premier AI-powered productivity tool through Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Immersive Spaces in Microsoft Teams was announced as reaching general availability in January. The virtual reality meetings, powered by Microsoft Mesh, were announced by Microsoft in May to “inject a sense of natural co-presence” during hybrid meetings. Microsoft Mesh, which allows developers to build virtual meeting spaces, will also be generally available in January.

Microsoft revealed a revamped SharePoint that it stated will “transform content management”. The tech giant said that SharePoint Premium will utilise AI to improve content experiences, optimise business processes and prepare content for Microsoft Copilot.

Among several new updates added to Microsoft 365 for frontline workers was Copilot’s availability for subscribers to the F3 license, starting in December and will be available for no extra cost. The product includes commercial data protection, enabling frontline workers to make intelligent requests.

Microsoft also unveiled new management tools to the Teams Admin Center, including shared calling for Teams Phone. Shared calling streamlines Teams Phone deployment, allowing admins to empower groups of users to make and receive public switched telephone network (PSTN) calls through a shared phone number and calling plan.

• Read more about all the Ignite news
• Five Key Takeaways From the Microsoft Ignite Keynote

Slack Announces New CEO

Slack has announced Denise Dresser as its new Chief Executive Officer.

As promised last week following the departure of former CEO Lidiane Jones to the dating platform business Bumble, Salesforce confirmed Dresser’s appointment on Monday. Dresser is a long-term Salesforce employee with extensive executive experience.

Dresser commented on LinkedIn:

I am incredibly humbled to share that I will be joining the team at Slack as CEO. Well before Salesforce acquired Slack, I was a fan. Now that I’ve worked in the platform for three years and seen its transformational power, I’m its biggest advocate. It’s truly made work simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. I cannot wait to dive in with the team and help even more companies change the way they work with Slack.”

Dresser has worked at Salesforce for 12 years and is credited with excelling in leadership roles of growing responsibility while improving task-driven, high-performance teams. Salesforce stressed Dresser has a “passion for product-driven customer success, collaborative leadership and mentoring future women leaders and top talent”.

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Cisco’s Collaboration Sales Grow For The First Time in a Year

Cisco’s collaboration sales have increased for the first time in a year.

As recorded in its latest earnings call for Q1 FY24, Cisco posted a three percent rise in collaboration sales, crediting an increase in calling and contact centre revenues. This has compensated for the ongoing decline in sales produced by its meetings business.

There were allusions to Webex’s operational quarter, with Cisco CEO and Chairman Chuck Robbins highlighting the platform’s new AI-powered features as well as the hybrid workspaces illustrated at this year’s WebexOne conference: “In our Collaboration portfolio, we recently introduced a range of truly game-changing AI capabilities spanning the entire Webex suite, as well as new devices for reimagined workspaces at our WebexOne event.”

More generally, Cisco reported a Q1 net income of $3.6 billion, compared to $2.7 billion in the previous year’s Q1. Revenue grew to $14.7 billion from $13.6 billion the year prior, an increase of eight percent.

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RingCentral Launches ‘Next-Level’ Events Platform

RingCentral has announced the general availability of RingCentral Events, a virtual, onsite, and hybrid event offering.

In August, RingCentral acquired Hopin Events for an undisclosed sum, which it has now rebranded to RingCentral Events. Hopin achieved unicorn status during the Covid pandemic and raised more than $1 billion in funding, valued at more than $7 billion.

Kristen Koenig, Head of Channel and Business Partnerships at RingCentral Events, said:

With RingCentral Events, we’re giving customers an incredibly frictionless experience – with flexibility to host either a single or multi-track events, advanced customization options, and now infused with AI to drive smarter event experiences for both organizers and attendees.”

RingCentral Events encompasses several event hosting capabilities, including comprehensive support of all event types with native registration, analytics, a mobile app, check-in, badge printing, lead retrieval, and over 40 app and data integrations.

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