Unified Communications & Video Conferencing

In todays modern age, technology has really driven collaboration within the workplace. In fact, in recent times, communication between employees, clients and suppliers has become easier and that experience of that has become more important than ever.

With the advent of smartphones, tablets and cost effective computing devices, there are many platforms out there, and it’s certainly confusing to work out what to use in your meeting room. 

In the business world, there are two main platforms, these being Microsoft Teams and Zoom. 

There are others but these are probably the most established and the most used in todays office environments. 

In the next section, I will explain some of the current room systems available that incorporates with these two particular platforms. 

Zoom was initially the favoured platform for businesses, but we saw this begin to change throughout 2020. Its initial appeal was that it had excellent features and they were rolled out quickly causing an initial high adoption of the technology.

Over time, questions were raised about the Chinese ownership of Zoom, and businesses began looking for an alternative. In addition, although the platform had a free version, it did cost money for a corporate membership plan.

Fast forward to 2021/2022, Microsoft replaced its ‘Skype for Business’ platform with what we know as ‘Microsoft Teams’.

Microsoft Teams was built from the ground up, and adoption started to increase due ownership issues around Zoom, and the fact that ‘Teams’ was free to businesses with an Office 365 subscription, so it was a no brainer for most corporates to switch over to Teams.

Teams also has a lot of additional features and flexibility, and the platform will only grow in the future. Its ease of use has also been key to its success, because a ‘Teams’ invite can easily be embedded into a standard calendar invite.