Is Microsoft Teams Insanity?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. This comment is possibly the most over used saying or meme on the internet. Normally next to Einstein but apparently no proof can be found that it is being correctly accredited to him. Like this:

The same aphorism crops up time and time again, but it seems to fit the conversation I have had over 20 times in 4 working days. In the last two weeks I have been at the London Law expo, Digital transformation expo and a Strategy Insight conference. This is the conversation:

Me: “What do you use communicate at work today?”

Customer: “We are using Skype but we know it is coming to end of life and have started playing with Teams”

Me: “How do you find the call quality?”

Customer: “Not the best to be honest” (One response was fine / many others with a stronger worded “Not the best”)

Me: “How about the performance of web collaboration and video calls with more than 4 attendees”

Customer: “This is a poor experience we sometimes use X instead in these scenarios”

Me: “So what is your strategy moving forwards?”

Customer: “We are most likely looking at MS Teams”

Me: “You do know that you can use a product that will work but I guess it depends if it is important to have quality conversations with colleagues and customers”

One person told me they planned to leave a conference early last Tuesday because they wanted to allow 30mins before they hosted a Skype conference because they were expecting problems. The month before I met a CIO that deployed a different conference platform just for the IT department as he felt Microsoft conferencing to be so bad but still let the rest of the business use Skype?

The last question I ask customers that have adopted in MS Teams is how much communication they do in Teams versus Outlook. I am yet to meet someone that says Teams has more than 50% of written communication. Strangely I often find Slack or RingCentral app users have found email as a secondary way of working. This is not meant as a big Microsoft bash I am writing in Word before I post on Linkedin. If Microsoft voice and conferencing works in your organisation great. Teams looks to have a large uptake, perhaps unsurprisingly given O365 bundles but ask your self this Is good? Good enough.

Real stories and views from users thankfully enabling me to have a job.

More detail on my views can be found here https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-has-microsoft-dominated-voice-world-james-turner/