The desire for quicker, most
efficient and secure communication within a business environment is what’s
driving the rapid adoption of modern collaboration tools.
Therefore, it is not surprising
that, as enterprise-capable collaboration platforms gain a strong foothold in
the market, organisations are rapidly replacing traditional and standard
communication solutions with these robust collaboration tools.
It is certainly true that we are
heading towards a future that will see the eradication of third-party messaging
apps from the corporate environment. At the same time, the use of email will be
restricted to communication with external parties and will thus see a
significant decline in its role as a corporate communications tool.
A forecast
by Synergy Research Group at the beginning of the year stated that spending on
team chat applications is expected to increase substantially this year as
demand for collaboration and unified communications software continues to boom.
The overall market for collaboration software is set to grow 9% this year, to
more than $45 billion globally, driven by several high-growth market areas.
Microsoft Teams is a case in point.
Released two years ago, Microsoft Teams signifies the software maker’s venture
into the burgeoning unified communications space and has been positioned as the
central hub for communications and collaboration within the Office 365
ecosystem.
For a fairly new product, it has
seen large-scale adoption both globally, as well as locally at enterprise
level. According to the latest figures, 125 000 organisations worldwide
are using Microsoft Teams, in 181 markets. The platform is currently available
in 44 languages and has garnered over 100 million active users.
Huge momentum is picking up around
Microsoft Teams. This is perhaps partly due to Microsoft’s entrenched presence
in the workplace with Windows and the Office suite, which provides the company
with a solid foundation to expand in the collaboration space.
Microsoft Teams has certainly
redefined daily communications within organisations. Not only is the adoption
of collaboration platforms driven by the need for increased efficiency and ease
of use, it is also driven by the demands of modern-day employees and how they
wish to communicate with each other.
The new generation of workers that
is entering the workplace is used to communicating via tools such as WhatsApp,
Facebook Messenger and Slack and organisations are starting to realise that
they need to catch on to that. They need to provide a similar experience in the
workplace for these users and Microsoft Teams is one of the products that can
do that.
Essentially, Microsoft Teams is a
messaging tool that enables text communication between users, and supports
group chat rooms with threaded conversations, as well as private messages
between individuals. It allows users to jump from instant messaging to a video
call at the push of a button.
However, it is also more than that,
as it combines strong content collaboration features, due to integration with
Microsoft’s software portfolio.
In terms of data security, every
element of a Teams workspace is saved in Office 365 products and each product
is backed by the full security compliance standards that Microsoft supports. By
eliminating third party communications apps, Microsoft Teams gives corporates
ownership of their data, it lives in their ecosystem and can be secured and
managed properly. This obviously eliminates the need to develop a strategy to
manage data sitting on other clouds, as is the case when third party
communications are used.
The future of modern collaboration
tools is very exciting. There is huge momentum and development is ongoing. This
is just the beginning.
