Empowering.Cloud (EC) has launched to provide regular and up-to-date Microsoft Teams insights, advice and training resources for IT professionals.
Briefings from Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), monthly Q&As with experts, learning paths and other resources can all be accessed on the EC platform.
Membership is free for individuals, but premium memberships are also available, which include further benefits such as a monthly live Q&A with experts, custom learning paths, private forums, priority on questions, and briefing topics.
Tom Arbuthnot, Microsoft Certified Master and MVP and Co-Founder of Empowering Cloud, said:
“There are 270 million monthly active Microsoft Teams users, but how many of them are getting all the value out of it, using all the features?
“The breadth of the Microsoft Teams and pace of change make it hard for IT Professionals to keep on top of it all, we are here to solve that problem.
“I work with lots of enterprise customers and with the demands on their IT teams they were struggling to keep up.
“If you’re not an enterprise customer with a larger IT team, it’s even more challenging. That was the genesis of Empowering.Cloud.”
Current solutions don’t quite cut it. The existing training space is slow-moving, according to Arbuthnot. Most courses are refreshed every 12 months, which he believes is not regularly enough as Teams changes every month. And typically training courses do not cover the wider Microsoft Teams ecosystem. Instead of long multi-hour courses, Empowering.Cloud will provide regular 15-minute briefings from a number of different experts.
Empowering.Cloud is able to provide this for free thanks to six “benefactor” sponsors: Audiocodes, AVI-SPL, Dubber, Luware, Neat, and Ribbon. Arbuthnot said he would be creating some content with the sponsors, but none of them will have any editorial influence over content on the platform.
Empowering Cloud Features
As mentioned above, Empowering.Cloud will provide regular 15-minute video briefings on Microsoft Teams and the surrounding ecosystem from experts including Microsoft MVPs, MCMs, and MCTs. The content will be updated on a monthly basis. July will include briefings from well-known experts Randy Chapman, Kevin Kieller, Lesley Crook and Graham Walsh.
The EC platform is custom built on Azure. You can sign into via your LinkedIn account or by creating an account. Over time, the system will learn what topics you are interested in and make briefing suggestions.
Alongside monthly updates, users will also be able to access a more traditional learning path which is helpful if you want to prepare for an exam on a specific topic, for example.
Arbuthnot discusses the target market: “It is aimed very specifically at IT professionals focused on Microsoft Teams.
“This spans end customer organisations and Microsoft partners, ISVs, operators and independent consultants. We are being very deliberately focused.”
Future Plans for Empowering Cloud
Looking ahead, Arbuthnot shared some of EC’s development plans, which include building a Microsoft Teams app and bot. IT Pros will be able to keep up to date with Teams all within Microsoft Teams.
He said he would be focusing on the needs of the Microsoft Teams IT Pros. He will be working closely with members to get their feedback and find out the topics they would like to cover and the questions they have.
Arbuthnot offers regular expert analysis on UC Today, including monthly Microsoft Teams updates. The most recent of which was the Microsoft Teams June Update. He has also spoken recently in his capacity as Solutions Director at Pure IP in a Microsoft Teams roundtable discussion.
Tom Arbuthnot is the co-founder of Empowering.Cloud with James Rodd, the former CEO of Modality Systems. Tom Morgan, a Microsoft MVP, is the Development Lead.
For more information on Empowering.Cloud or to sign up, visit the website.
