News about Zoom, Cisco and Microsoft Teams
UC Today News Roundup November 22nd to 29th 2019
November is coming to an end, and everyone is already getting excited about the festivities lined up for December. However, before you decorate your tree and hang your stockings, it might be worth checking out what’s going on in the world of communications, collaboration and customer experience. After all – the last week has been a great one!
Over the last seven days, we’ve delivered a number of exciting reports on everything from Cisco’s revenue decline, to the arrival of Microsoft Teams real-time direct routing.
If you haven’t had a chance to keep up with the news over the last week – here’s what we think you can’t afford to miss!
Are Storms Brewing in the Collab Landscape?
After months of collaboration and communications companies actually working well together, you might be surprised to hear that Cisco recently pointed out a significant flaw in Zoom’s system. The Cisco communications company posted a blog last week from their SVP/GM of the Team Collaboration Group, Sri Srinivasan. The blog highlighted the importance of Webex Teams being unwilling to compromise on security for its users.
At the same time, Sri also pulled attention to yet another verified weakness in the conferencing platform available from Zoom – one of the fastest-growing brands in the collaboration space. Here’s what you need to know about the latest Zoom discovery.
“Zoom Tax” Stops Organisations from Conferencing
Businesses of all sizes are being discouraged from rolling video conferencing options out to their meeting rooms by the costs of room licensing fees according to COO of Lifesize, Michael Hambrecht. The fees for conferencing room subscriptions, which he referred to as “Zoom tax” are having a serious impact on the growth of the video conferencing landscape and could be holding back potential growth.
As an alternative, Michael suggested using the new Dash room kit software from Lifesize, which can be implemented on an experimental basis, without any hidden costs. The Dash licensees allow organisations to register multiple meeting rooms to the Lifesize cloud service. You can learn more about this Zoom Rooms alternative in our article here.
Cisco Projects Revenue Decline for 2020
In the last few months, we’ve seen some exciting announcements from Cisco, including the new opportunity for businesses on Microsoft Teams to access meetings using Cisco technology. We’ve also seen the arrival of things like contextual collaboration, and exciting new upgrades in Cisco room tech. However, according to the latest financial report from Cisco, the company is expecting to lose revenue in 2020.
The CEO of Cisco, Chuck Robbins said that the company delivered a solid quarter for the first of 2019/2020, despite a challenging environment. The company is continuing to focus on driving innovation and transformation, although it does expect a 3-5% revenue decrease.
Cisco Shares Predictions for 2020 Collaboration
Now that we’re starting to make our way into the new year, countless companies at the head of the communication landscape have begun to share their predictions on what the future might hold. We even had the opportunity to speak to the CMO of the collaboration at Cisco, Aruna Ravichandran. She shared with us her opinions about the changing collaboration landscape, telling us that she believes everything from augmented reality to AI voice assistants will disrupt 2020.
Aruna believes that voice assistants will be smarter than ever to support the rise of the contextual collaboration landscape. What’s more, she sees plenty of room for thrilling new technology to make its way into the space.
Introducing Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Diagnostics
Finally, leading company for the development of proactive unified communications network monitoring solutions, Nectar Services recently made a new announcement as part of the Microsoft Ignite Conference. The Nectar brand will now be introducing new Nectar Diagnostics for Teams Direct Routing. This new offering will help companies to access better end-user experiences, with advanced Microsoft Phone System direct routing support.
The solution from Nectar marks one of the company’s first steps in developing a more comprehensive Microsoft Teams support strategy, that’s ready to grow in the months to come. You can find out all about the latest Direct Routing solution in our full report, with quotes from Chief Technology Officer for Nectar, Joe Fuccillo.
What are the most exciting stories from the last week in your opinion? What are you looking forward to in December? Join the conversation on social media today!