Gartner MQ for Meetings
Gartner issued its Magic Quadrant for Meetings this month. It included 15 providers, three of which were declared Leaders: Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom. Each has bragging rights. The three were clustered together well apart from the others. It was a…
Epic App Store Fight
Apple’s App Store monopoly is being attacked again! This time by Epic, last time by Basecamp, and previous times by Netflix, Match, Spotify, and I’m sure others. It’s a complex battle with sound arguments on both sides. So, in this…
Microsoft Teams: In The Room Where it Happens, Virtually
Microsoft introduced 14 new features for Teams last week — mostly related to meetings. As usual, the news has received strong coverage. The star new feature is Together Mode. It’s a simple approach to virtual reality that requires no glasses. …
When 75M Isn’t Enough
Last month, Microsoft reported that its Teams product hit 75M daily active users. It’s a significant achievement that suggests Teams is a wildly successful product. While 75M DAU is clearly impressive, I suspect the figure is significantly lower than what…
Forbes is Sensational
I frequently come across misleading headlines. Usually, these are from the shadier click-bait sites that are more concerned about total views than retaining an audience. I thought Forbes was better, but I came across two posts recently that were deceptive….
Microsoft Acquires Metaswitch
It was a real Brain Game when Microsoft announced that it acquired Metaswitch Networks this month. The last time I met with team Meta was at partner event in NOLA. The event had a cerebral theme and the guest speaker…
TalkingHeadz with Murali Sitaram, GM Yammer
It was wonderful to catch up with Murali, now at Microsoft. The first time we met was eight years ago when he was running Webex Quad. We did this interview. Quad was replaced by Spark, now known as Webex Teams….
Teams and its 13M Milestone
Well, I can’t make fun of Microsoft any more for not publishing daily active users (DAU). Microsoft has largely danced around actual adoption with positive but vague hints. We can see now that adoption was indeed lower than Slack —…
TalkingHeadz Podcast with Ilya Bukshteyn
One of the most interesting aspects of Microsoft’s journey is how the software company became savvy at hardware. Short answer is partnerships. And, the architect of the SfB and Teams room system solutions is Ilya Bukshteyn. Meeting rooms is critical…
Life on a Chromebook
I use a desktop at the office, but on the road I have always used a Windows laptop. I avoided the Mac vortex, and stayed mostly within a single Microsoft Ecosystem. Though, my adoption of Google products and services has…
Top Considerations in Teams vs. Webex
There’s a lot to Microsoft Teams and the Cisco Webex Suite. These solutions are much broader than UC or conferencing. Both have expanded their services to include: Team Chat UCaaS/Calling Audio and Video Conferencing Carrier services Platform Services In the…
Winners and Losers of 2018
2018 is a 12 month slice of time. In the world of enterprise communications, not much changes in 12 months. Each company has a few releases and a handful of major announcements. While market share remains largely unchanged in 12…
My Thoughts on #MSIgnite 2018
I will, of course, put together a more comprehensive analysis of this event in a research note, but it won’t be my ‘usual few days’ turn around. It’s been back-to-back travel this fall, and Mitel Next is the next event…
Do E-Boards Foster or Hinder Collaboration?
“I believe whiteboards are an evil presence in meetings … Simply going to the board and picking up a pen changes the whole dynamic of meeting ownership, agenda, control and creates a power-dynamic that is pretty hostile to collaboration.” These…
Microsoft Teams: Two Steps Forward
At Microsoft Ignite this week, and there’s lots of interesting announcements. Ignite is Microsoft’s biggest conference of the year. It is aimed at IT Pros. Also here in Orlando, Microsoft is concurrently hosting Envision aimed at IT Decision Makers. Tons…
Microsoft versus Cisco: A Classic Three-card Monte Con
If you are spending time debating between Cisco and Microsoft communications solutions, you are likely falling victim to the classic three-card monte con. The Three-Card Monte Con The three-card monte con is simple. A dealer places three cards face down…
Thoughts on Microsoft’s #EC17 Keynote
SfB saw very few improvements over the past year, so I was curious as to how Microsoft would fill its keynote slot at Enterprise Connect. The speaker, Ron Markezich, is new to me. The former CIO is a CVP within…
Surface Pro Winning Mac Fans?
There’s a very popular news story this week about the Surface Pro computers winning over Macbook Pro customers. From The Verge Microsoft has been targeting Mac users with its Surface commercials recently, and it appears they might be paying off….
MS Teams With Andrei Soroker (podcast)
When it comes to messaging apps, Andrei is a pro. I tracked him down to get his take on MS Teams. Andrei Soroker is the cofounder and CEO of Sameroom, an interoperability platform for real-time communication services, like Skype, Slack,…
Microsoft Teams Arrives – Free 2Pager
When I describe Workstream Messaging I inevitably make a reference to Slack. That’s about to change as most of the world is about to discover the concept from Microsoft with its newest offer: Microsoft Teams. There was a rumor sometime ago…