Microsoft Teams turns seven today – another milestone for the platform that’s transformed how we work since its general release on 14 March 2017.

Microsoft surging to the top of a new market is hardly surprising, but few could have predicted Teams’ impact over the past seven years.

Now encompassing everything from video and AI assistants to contact centre functionality and virtual reality meetings, it’s hard to remember a time when Teams ‘just’ a chat app.

But that’s pretty much how even Microsoft described it way back in 2017: “A chat-based workspace.”

Microsoft (publicly, at least) planned for Teams to sit alongside other applications.

“Office 365 is designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group with purpose-built, integrated applications: Outlook for enterprise-grade email; SharePoint for intelligent content management; Yammer for networking across the organisation; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; and now, Microsoft Teams,” Microsoft said in a blog at the time.

However, it has since gone on to, to a greater or lesser extent, swallow these other applications.

Where Office 365 was originally the sun, orbited by other applications, Teams now sits at the centre of Microsoft’s workplace universe.

However, its beginnings were humble, and even mocked by its then-greatest competitor, Slack.

Dear Microsoft

Back in 2016, Slack was way out in front when it came to workplace chat, vowing to kill off email once and for all.

Slack’s execs pushed it as a modern, agile alternative to the stuffy enterprise communications software pushed by the likes of Cisco and even Microsoft – which had Lync and then Skype for Business.

The competitive landscape changed on 2 November 2016 when Microsoft revealed Teams.

Slack’s fear was evident for all to see – notably after it published a misguided advertorial in the New York Times titled ‘Dear Microsoft’  on launch day.

Lines like

“We’re genuinely excited to have some competition”

and

“It’s validating to see you’ve come around to the same way of thinking”

and

“We’re glad you’re going to be helping us define this new product category”

were as transparent as they were fearful, and had the opposite effect to what Slack intended.

Functionality aside, Microsoft had something Slack didn’t. Something as contentious today as it was then. A huge customer base.

Bundled in

Teams’ success has been built on the foundations of Microsoft’s existing Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) customer base.

On 14 March 2017, Teams was bundled in with Office 365 for free, giving every Microsoft customer what was essentially a free Slack alternative that instantly integrated with the Microsoft tools they already used.

This irked Slack from the start and triggered anticompetitive complaints that recently saw Microsoft bow to EU pressure and unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 in Europe. However, at 320m monthly active users as of October last year, the damage has surely been done.

Teams: The New Operating System

Microsoft didn’t take long to reposition its entire workplace portfolio around Teams.

Teams was revealed in November 2016, generally available in March 2017, and by September 2017 Microsoft revealed it would kill Skype for Business in 2021.

Countless features have been added since, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella claiming Team’s aggregation of so many tools and platforms makes it something of an operating system in itself.

It’s not surprising Microsoft has added new features and integrations but few could have anticipated Team’s impact on the wider unified communications industry.

The industry’s biggest players – Cisco, Zoom, RingCentral, Dialpad and more – all integrate with Teams or have apps in the Teams store. The same can be said for the top CCaaS vendors in the world. Ironically, Teams’ competitors are now a huge driver of its growth.

Meanwhile, in the telecoms space, carriers have been falling over themselves to become Operator Connect-accredited, which is tapping the opportunity Teams provides in the voice space.

The Future

No one expected Teams to be where it is now seven years ago, so it’s even harder to predict where it might end up in another seven years’ time.

We can all pray there won’t be another growth driver like the pandemic anytime soon, but there are certainly many trends pushing Teams, and the industry as a whole, forward.

The convergence of technology is one driver – with lines between UC, meeting room technology, audiovisual tech, HR platforms, CRM, and more – becoming blurrier.

Generative AI has already developed faster than we would have imaged two years ago, and Microsoft will undoubtedly embed it deeper into Teams as time goes on.

Then there’s virtual reality, with Microsoft making VR meetings generally available on Teams in January.

Whatever happens over the coming years, we can be sure Teams will be right at the centre of it.

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/4HodE0K