Microsoft Teams September Update 2020

Competing Providers Will Play Nice; Here’s Why

In the last few months, industry giants like Avaya and Cisco have hopped onto the Session Border Controller (SBC) bandwagon, getting Teams certifications. This makes business telephony dramatically simpler in multi-vendor environments. “If you've got a Cisco or an Avaya telephony estate, you've probably got one of these session border controllers already. Now, you can start putting Teams users on there, leveraging that existing infrastructure. You don't need to change anything about my supportability, config, or basic topology. Just reconfigure the SBC slightly to connect to Teams and carry on using the same phone numbers, the same internal experience,” mentions Tom.

We remarked that this is an incredibly open philosophy for Microsoft. But Tom pointed out that the company has always had equal system programs, which invited anyone to come and certify. “The more options and the more capacitive it is, the better for the customer, and the better for Microsoft.”

A more pertinent question is probably “why would Cisco and Avaya do it?”

“The answer is –  they'd rather hold on to that piece of the pie than fight and lose to a competitive SBC. If you're an Avaya customer with tens of thousands of Avaya IP phones, and some people want Teams, you can start moving them over gently. Whereas if Avaya says say NO, you've got to make a hard choice – pick the new kit or stick with us, they might lose that battle. Suddenly, they've lost all their other core business as well,” Tom explains.

Customers, too, would welcome these moves, as it reduces costs significantly. Legacy investments (or just investments, full stop) can be huge in the enterprise, and the cost of swapping out bare plastic from every desk can pile up.

Tom says that there is another layer of cost as well – the effort needed to adopt a brand new system.

“The cost of the kit and cost of plugging is probably going down. But there’s the matter of running them in AWS or Azure so you can go spin up a new SBC in five minutes. If your whole operating model, your support team, and everything else rely on the kit they know, then that real cost of swap out is much more than the kit itself,” he points out the real challenge.

In addition to these back-end upgrades, Microsoft Teams also introduced Coordinated Meetings in September.

What is 'Coordinated Meetings' and What Does it Mean for You?

In a month without too many new features, we were looking forward to this small but essential feature. Tom has already authored a blog on the subject, so we were eager to pick his brain on how Coordinated Meetings help Teams Rooms and Surface Hub to work together.

“You have two Microsoft devices that do similar – but not the same – thing. Microsoft Teams Room is your audio video device for Teams meetings with touch and whiteboarding. Surface Hub is your collaboration board, but it also has a video camera, a mic, and speakers. It can join a Teams meeting. They're very different use cases.

Till now, the two didn't have any recognition of each other even in the same space. When customers joined the meeting on one, the other device didn't know about it. If both devices joined, you get that classic “we have to mute one, we have to meet with the other” dilemma. The Coordinated Meetings feature says in the config that both devices are in the same physical space. It is all ready to go without the user having to choose this camera on, that camera off, etc.,” he said.

If you own both these devices, your meeting experience is likely to improve by a vast margin. The next feature moves from the end customer to ISVs.

A Small Leap in Call Records Management that’s a Big Leap for ISVs

“Before this announcement, the only way ISVs could get a bill or call records from Microsoft was to log into a web portal and download an excel file. Many, many big customers want to understand their telecom, conferencing, and carrier spending, and they want to cross-charge it to different countries or business units. But you'd have to download an excel and slice-and-dice in some way. For example, Modality would do it in SQL and Power BI. There was no API-driven way to capture that information,” Tom said.

The new Microsoft Teams PSTN call logs introduce an API that simplifies call data export. “There's an API in preview that ISVs can just hook up, grab the call records, pull them into a database, and slice-and-dice them,” said Tom, adding that it is a non-licensed API, open to all users.

TeamsFest 2020 is Almost Here, and we Can’t Wait

Community events are getting a major leg-up this year, gaining from the new virtual format, that lets more experts and attendees join in. One event we are all looking forward to is TeamsFest 2020, organised by Chris Hoard, Adam Deltinger, Vesku Nopanen, and Chris Webb – four different MVPs from around Europe.

“You wouldn't normally see whole conferences around a single product – but because Teams reaches into the Power platform and automation, it reaches into genuine collaboration workflows and all the UC elements. There's a lot to talk about, and as we see every month, there's always something changing, something new. The hard thing really is just keeping up with the content!” Tom opines. Events like TeamsFest are an excellent way to stay updated on all things MS Teams, and we look forward to Tom’s session in particular, on using the Teams Phone System for everyday customer service management.

These were the key highlights of our conversation. Make sure to watch the full video for:

• Microsoft’s latest deal that wins the company 270,000 users
• How Microsoft Teams plans to keep up with competitors like Zoom
• A new broadcasting feature that’s got us excited at UC Today

Please visit us on YouTube to like, share, or subscribe. A final shoutout to Ribbon Communications for being an invaluable partner, and thank you, dear reader, for tuning in!