Welcome back to our weekly round-up of the most popular news stories coming from the unified comms space.

It was a busy week this week as Microsoft finally unveiled Windows 11, RingCentral launched a swath of hybrid meeting updates and Zoom saw its Zoom Phone solution hit one and a half million users.

Microsoft Integrates Teams with Windows 11

The tech titan unveiled the newest version of its operating system, Windows 11. As part of the latest iteration, the Microsoft Teams chat app has been integrated into the taskbar, though users who want the full app will have to go to the re-designed Microsoft Store to download it for free.

The addition of Teams to the OS signals the further decline of video pioneering platform Skype, which was bought by Microsoft for $8.5bn a decade ago. Microsoft is also ending its support for Skype for Business – Teams’ predecessor – next month.

Zoom Phones Hits 1.5m Seats

Zoom celebrated another milestone this week as it saw its Zoom Phone solution hit 1.5 million seats worldwide.

The collaboration platform provider launched the solution in 2019 to give SMBs an easy-to-use and deploy phone solution that also offers advanced capabilities required by enterprise organisations.

“Zoom Phone has been an astounding success,” said Elka Popova, VP of Connected Work Research at Frost & Sullivan.

“Thanks to its innovative pricing model and widespread availability in 46 countries and territories, it has quickly become an attractive option for many SMB and enterprise customers around the world”

RingCentral Reveals Updates to Rooms Offering

The cloud comms provider unveiled a host of updates to its RingCentral Rooms solution, including voice-activated controls, enabling users to start meetings without pushing a button, and the ability to control meetings from a mobile device.

Nat Natarajan, Executive Vice President of Products and Engineering at RingCentral, said:

“At RingCentral, we are focused on connecting people – wherever they are located – with the best messaging, video, and cloud phone service.

“As offices open up, organisations are quickly adapting to support a collaborative hybrid workforce that creates participation equity”

“Our rapid innovation on RingCentral Rooms makes it easier and more rewarding for people to connect, resulting in a more inclusive culture so they can do their best work.”

Security Gap Discovered in Microsoft Power Apps

A possible security flaw has been discovered in the Microsoft ecosystem which may distress Microsoft Teams users. Recently, the Microsoft team patched a vulnerability in the Microsoft Teams environment .

The vulnerability found by Tenable researcher Evan Grant would allow attackers to take control of the end user’s account and gain access to various sources of data, including chat history, OneDrive files, and emails.

According to Tenable, the Microsoft Teams environment features a default setting that allows users to launch applications as tabs within the teams they use. Companies using Office 365 or Teams on their own with a Basic Business license or higher will also be able to launch “Power Apps” in the same way. However, content loaded onto these Power Apps was apparently governed with a poorly anchored regular expression.

How Has the Pandemic Affected Team Collaboration?

We gathered industry experts together for a roundtable to discuss how team collaboration has evolved over the past year and a half.

Execs from Nureva, Mitel, Facebook, RingCentral, and Avaya opined on how team collaboration has changed because of the pandemic, who were the technology winners, and what it might look like in a post-pandemic world.

What are your thoughts on this week’s big news stories? Join the conversation on our social media channels!



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