Teams Rooms Managed Services does, in essence, what it says on the tin. For an additional fee on top of a standard package, Microsoft will manage (virtually) your Teams meeting rooms for you.

Here is how it works, where it thrives and where it, perhaps, falls a little short.

When was Teams Rooms Managed Services Launched?

The service has existed in a handful of guises since first being announced at Microsoft’s Inspire partner event in 2019.

It was first known as Managed Meeting Rooms while in private preview, before being renamed to Microsoft Teams Room Premium when it launched formally in July last year.

The branding has since been rejiggled again to Teams Rooms Managed Services, making it one part of the overarching Teams Rooms Premium subscription – which, like the Teams Room Standard licence, includes the core licensing SKUs (at reduced/bundled cost), allowing a Teams Room to be licensed without buying and assigning individual aspects – this includes:

  • Core Teams Licence
  • Skype for Business Online Plan (soon to be retired)
  • Phone System Licence
  • Audio Conferencing Licence
  • Intune (for device/meeting room management)

How Does it Work?

The managed service provides proactive monitoring and technical support from Microsoft direct to end-users, via their help desk, covering areas such as faulty devices, known issues, updates and threat detection.

The service is built up of an artificial intelligence layer of support, with a team of Microsoft engineers on hand to provide 24/7 support for anything not swept up by the AI.

Together, the two layers continuously monitor the environment, checking for any faults, software updates and break-fix guidance.

Microsoft will raise tickets proactively when it finds an issue and will in many cases fix the problem without any action needed from the customer’s IT partner or in-house support team.

If a device has been unplugged, for example, it will flag the issue for the customer and advise on how to fix the problem.

Each issue, and the steps taken by Microsoft to remediate the problem, is logged in the service’s portal. Customers can also raise tickets themselves, for Microsoft to investigate.

That is, in a nutshell, how the service works. Microsoft takes over the running of the environment, so the customer does not have to manage it.

How Can the Service be Bought?

Teams Rooms is broken into two tiers: Teams Room Standard, which is $15 per device per; and Premium (which includes the managed service) is $50 per device per month.

Microsoft had initially planned for the premium service to be $50 on top of the standard $15 rate but ultimately landed on a flat $50 for the advanced tier.

Customers in the US and Canada can buy the service directly from Microsoft, with UK businesses buying through CSPs and LSPs. The UK price works out roughly the same when converted into Sterling.

Customers can also try the service free for three months here, or via a partner.

Is There Demand for the Service (or Service Like It)?

In short, yes.

Rob Quickenden, Chief Strategy Officer, at Microsoft partner Cisilion, told UC Today that interest in the managed rooms services is has rocketed over recent weeks, as businesses start to prepare for returning to offices and meeting rooms.

He explained that it has been relatively simple to make all-remote meetings inclusive of all participants, but this will become trickier with hybrid working.

“We’re spoilt for choice for tools when we’re remote if we use Teams properly,” he said. “We can jump on whiteboards, share files, record and transcribe meetings, and all of these wonderful things.

“But people are going to go back to the meeting rooms that they haven’t touched in 12 months and say, ‘well the whiteboard is on the wall now; no one can see that if they’re not actually in the room’”

“Suddenly, someone is going to be disadvantaged, so we’re seeing as much demand for meeting rooms now as we did for home working devices last year.”

Demand for smart meeting rooms has increased, particularly smaller “huddle spaces”, he said – but these rooms need to be maintained by someone.

Is Teams Room Managed Services the Answer?

In short, it is hard to say.

Cisilion uses the Premium service for its four meeting rooms in London, and Quickenden said the offering does what it says it will do, in a fast and effective way.

“The SLA is four hours but if we test it but unplugging a USB device or something like that, we find that a ticket is usually raised by Microsoft within two hours,” he said. “It’s really, really good.”

The challenge comes in what the service does not do.

Quickenden said that the functions the service does remotely are effective – such as alerting and device updates – but if Microsoft cannot fix the problem remotely then someone else needs to do it, meaning it is not a totally managed service. This is often where their customers need help.

The customer may still need an IT team or partner on-site, and if they are having to pay for this regardless, are they going to spend an extra $35 per device per month for Microsoft’s service?

Another dynamic to consider is the services offered by the hardware vendors themselves, most of which have management and diagnostics capabilities available to both customers and partners.

“Most of the meeting room vendors – Yealink, Poly, Logitech – have their own platforms that do a level of proactive alerting and tools to manage, update (and down-grade) firmware and generate usage and reliability reports. These are usually included by the vendor for free,” he said.

“The limitation is that, if you have a multi-vendor estate, you may have to deploy all of the platforms, so it’s a hard one to work out at the moment.”

Who is The Service Aimed at?

Again, it is hard to say.

Microsoft has not revealed much about who is using the service, other than saying it currently manages thousands of rooms across hundreds of customers. It is not clear if they are targeting SMBs, large enterprises or both.

Smaller businesses with three or four meeting rooms may consider it to be fair value for money. However, they may think that this number of rooms is easily managed internally or by their IT partner.

So, is it aimed at large enterprises with hundreds of meeting rooms across the world? This type of business would arguably benefit most from the service, although the cost quickly adds up over a multi-year period.

“It’s hard to see where Microsoft is specifically aiming it”

“Is it an SMB, which could probably go all-in with one vendor for 20 rooms and use the free services, or is it a global organisation with 500 meeting rooms? 500 multiplied by $35 over five years is a lot of money, and I just don’t think many companies are going to pay that sort of money for it,” Quickenden said.

What is the channel’s role?

The role of the channel is, in theory, to plug the gaps left by Microsoft – like repairing and replacing devices, for example.

Quickenden said that this seemed to be the plan originally. He explained that when the service was first announced in 2019, Microsoft alluded to capabilities that would allow the integration of services from partners.

For example, if Microsoft raises a ticket against a faulty device that it cannot fix remotely, the system will pass this to a break-fix partner that could attend the side and replace the device.

“This is where we have struggled with it,” Quickenden said. “It’s still a bit blurry so we are building our own services around it for now to service the immediate need.

“What we find customers want is often more of a white-glove service and one of the things that were on the roadmap, and is missing at the moment, is the true role of the partner.

“A Microsoft employee is not going to arrive on-site and plug in a USB cable or change a dead device.

“During the pilot, there were a handful of partners with fleets of field engineers that were going to be offering add-on services. If a device is completely dead, the service would coordinate with a partner and flag the problem in the meeting room, and get it fixed”

“That is how it was talked about in one of the Ignite sessions, but I’ve not seen anything else about it and I’ve also not seen any partners talking about it.”

So, the full channel play is yet to materialise, with partners only able to view the same portal and tickets as the customer – making it hard to add genuine value.

Quickenden said that Microsoft can handle most issues remotely, meaning that what is left behind is not a compelling business proposition for partners.

He said he would like to see is a model that sees alerts go directly to partners, rather than Microsoft.

“Microsoft is collecting all the data whether the customer is paying for the Premium service or not, so if we could just use the alerting ourselves, we wouldn’t need Microsoft to report on it,” he explained.

“We’re trying to work out at the moment is whether we can do what Microsoft does without having to pay the extra $35.

“What I’d like to see them do is make a cut-down version for partners which lets us connect our own platform and they’d simply light up the APIs for reporting. That would let us be the managed service provider.”

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/2RIEPY3