It’s that time of the week again where we round up the latest happenings n the UC&C space.
This week saw Avaya post triumphant Q2 earnings that led CEO Jim Chirico to declare it now a “cloud-first company”, Cisco has followed up the completion of its Slido acquisition with another deal and we update you with the latest additions to Microsoft Teams.
What’s New in Teams?
Last month, Microsoft announced Teams had hit a record of 145 million daily active users. It also rolled out a number of new features for the UC platform, including its very own Instagram account!
April’s updates introduced the ability to reassign participants to new breakout rooms, as well as invite-only meetings that will remove non-invited attendees to the waiting lobby and improvements to the polling system.
Chat and collaboration saw product feedback rolled out, as well as native Windows 10 notifications and an enhanced GIF library. Teams Rooms users on Windows and Android can also expect an improved experience.
Avaya Makes Cloud Stance Clear
The comms and collaboration vendor reported an eight percent rise in its revenues to $738m for its second quarter.
CEO Jim Chirico took the opportunity to celebrate its transition to a cloud-focused company, as well as hailing its shift to a subscription-based revenue model.
He stated:
“Our business continues to outperform our expectations, which is a testament to the strength of our brand, digital capabilities, roadmap and our ability to address the diversity and breadth of requirements that come with servicing global, large scale, complex enterprise customers. If you put this in context, Avaya is now a cloud-first company.”
Cisco Acquires Socio Labs
Following hot on the heels of the completion of its Slido deal, Cisco has acquired hybrid event platform Socio Labs to expand Webex’s event capabilities.
The networking giant said the addition will bolster its credentials around live streaming, sponsorship, participant networking and analytics.
“Socio Labs offers Webex powerful technology to provide customers with an unparalleled hybrid event management solution to engage participants whether they join in person or virtually,” stated Jeetu Patel, General Manager of Collaboration and Security at Cisco.
“The future of events, like the future of work, will be hybrid”
Google Meet’s Latest Updates
From this month, laptop and desktop users of Google Meet will enjoy a new UI with various easy-to-access features.
Its new Meet for Web offering encompasses video feed updates, viewing and presenting features, and solutions to reduce meeting fatigue. For instance, you can choose how to view yourself in a video meeting or remove your video stream from the screen entirely.
For presentations, Google has added improved pinning and unpinning. This means that when a presentation tiel is unpinned it reduced to the same size as other tiles, allowing for a smoother transition for presenters.
Google will also be adding video background replacement for the platform in the near future.
BT Wholesale Launches First Partner Programme
The telecom service provider’s new partner programme has formalised the structure previously in place and makes clear to partners the benefits they receive from joining the programme.
The three-tier programme also allows partners to advertise their brand association with BT and offers a greater range of benefits, including commercial support, sales and marketing resources and learning tools.
Senior Manager of Transformation, Trevor Lovelock, told UC Today:
“Partner Plus gives our partners a much clearer give-and-get between themselves and BT. We’ve set out our stall with this programme; it’s about rewarding loyalty and growth with us, and the tiering structure of the programme is something that we think will enable that.”
