Back to the Future of Chat

A few years ago, I blogged about the future of chat, its evolution and how it was going to change the way we collaborate in addition to the instant, persistent communication it already enables.

We’ve a come long way since April 2016. One application in particular – Microsoft Teams – is leading the way when it comes to creating a platform that can bring all major enterprise applications together into one workspace, which I have dubbed the "digital cockpit.” Over the past 12-18 months I have been using Teams and I have learned a lot and provided a ton of feedback to the Microsoft product group. It’s now rolling out across Accenture in sort of a ‘soft launch’ capacity. Why a soft launch? Well…as you know, it takes a while to turn around a tanker, and when almost a half a million people are accustomed to using Outlook, Skype for Business and the various Office suite applications, changing habits will take a while. 

Although we launched in pilot a little over a year ago we have already achieved something quite extraordinary. In that time, in quite a viral way, Accenture has reached over 108,000 active users! These are users that are coming back day after day with their teams to be more productive using a seamless collaboration platform, and really enjoying the experience. 

This past week at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft’s largest global conference for IT Pros held in Orlando, Florida, there were a ton of Microsoft Teams announcements about new features, platform experience improvements and new capabilities that are coming soon. Accenture’s amazing global usage was highlighted on several occasions during the keynotes and in smaller sessions which, of course, I loved to see. It is abundantly clear that this platform is considered the unifying glue between all their services and those from 3rd parties, and it is very evident that global users are responding very positively. Microsoft even referred to it as their fastest growing business platform ever. [Here is another great Teams article where we were mentioned.]

I have been fortunate to be actively using Teams quite a bit longer than the average user, so I wanted to pass along my thoughts on how I see this changing what is really core to how we work. At Accenture, Teams will eventually replace Skype for Business and considerably reduce email. But first, everyone should dip their toes in the Teams pool. ??

Here are a few thoughts:

We consider Teams our digital cockpit for the modern workplace:

·      Microsoft Teams functions as a Meta OS, sitting right above the OS layer, and combines all the things someone most commonly uses to be productive 

·      Microsoft Teams can integrate with 3rd party apps (like Trello, Jenkins, Twitter, etc.)

·      It brings chat, meetings, documents, and services directly into Teams where you will be spending most of your time working

·      Everything is now in one place enabling people to get more done without changing applications and losing context at every turn

How it works across devices:

·      Microsoft built Teams to be a communication platform across all operating systems and modalities (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Surface Hubs, etc.)

·      It’s one of the first products designed to be optimized across all platforms

·      It has enabled companion experiences, so your Teams chat, and meetings can span multiple devices

·      Enables safe and secure, encrypted mobile messaging for the enterprise

·      Soon will have an “In Motion” mode that will tune the experience for safe driving while on calls

 Teams can reduce emails and extend seamless experiences….

·      Enabling the individual and team to take interactions out of email with use of persistent chat

·      Chats persist, get archived and provide a more natural/less formal interaction than email

·      Bring business application interactions right to where you and the team are working via micro services and bots

·      Enables a platform for AI to automate certain tasks which reduces time spent on things not immediately relevant to our jobs (e.g. tech support requests, time reports, dev environment provisioning, etc.)

·      The ultimate Human+Machine partnering platform for the enterprise

…and allow truly borderless collaboration

·      Federation with other companies is coming soon

·      The federation process will be different than it was with Skype for Business. It will be open, no longer our teams to go through a formal process to get enabled quickly. If the other user is configured with federation too, they can talk automatically.

·      Guest access to people outside of our organization (clients, contractors, vendors, agencies)

Lastly, there are a few cool, recent updates:

·      PowerPoint sharing in meetings

·      Video background blurring for your camera in meetings

·      Dial in conferencing (coming later this year at Accenture)

·      Live events (replacement for Skype Meeting Broadcast)

Listen to our recent CIO 24/7 Podcast where I talk with our Program Lead for Accenture's Teams deployment, Bill Schulz, about our Teams journey. 

As you can tell, I am quite excited about all that is and what will be possible with Microsoft Teams. I truly believe it’s a transformational conversation platform for the enterprise. As evidenced by Accenture’s rapid user growth and feedback, our users are seeing the benefits and telling their colleagues to try it out. There are still some things our users have continued to ask for to make the platform and user experience even better, and we are working closely with Microsoft to make this happen, but we are excited to see where this is headed. If you haven’t yet tried Microsoft Teams I encourage you to check it out on your own and let me know what you think. Until then, I’ll chat with you later!