Microsoft has introduced a hands-on preview for the industrial prospects of its new Teams Premium product designed to make conferences extra private, clever, and safe.
The premium product consists of a number of slick options, akin to:
Use of synthetic intelligence to offer reside translation and clever recaps of conferences with autogenerated chapters and steered motion objects and insights;
Advanced protections with the usage of watermarks, end-to-end encryption, and sensitivity labels to dam copying and pasting of chat classes;
Tools for creating and managing high-quality webinars;
A Virtual Appointment dashboard for controlling the digital appointment expertise from end-to-end; and
Ability to increase an organization’s picture throughout conferences by branding backgrounds.
“This is an opportunity for Microsoft to open up monetization opportunities beyond Microsoft 365,” noticed Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research, a client know-how advisory agency in New York City.
“You’ll get a baseline level of functionality, but there’ll be more functionality at a higher price tier,” Rubin informed TechNewsWorld.
Race for AI Solutions
The AI options do a number of issues not performed at conferences, akin to present outlines, notes, and translations for his or her viewers, noticed Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst on the Enderle Group, an advisory providers agency in Bend, Ore.
“I expect this AI component will be the defining difference between platforms in the future,” he informed TechNewsWorld. “The powerful conferencing solutions seem to be racing to see who can provide the most powerful AI-based solutions.”
Intelligent Recap holds quite a lot of promise for serving to organizations get essentially the most out of conferences, maintained J. P. Gownder, a vice chairman and principal analyst at Forrester Research, a nationwide market analysis firm.
“Too often, follow-ups and action items are forgotten after a meeting,” Gownder informed TechNewsWorld. “People who missed the meeting struggle to find out the value of the meeting.”
“Intelligent Recap promises to automate the process of extracting follow-ups, action items, and the content of the meeting,” he continued. “It will take some time to learn from real-world meetings, but it promises to increase the value of meetings and link them to business actions.”
More Efficient Meetings
In some methods, the brand new instruments in Teams Premium make digital conferences extra environment friendly than in-person conferences, famous Michael Inouye, a principal analyst at ABI Research, a worldwide know-how intelligence agency.
“By more efficient, I mean making accessing information from past meetings and managing follow-ups more streamlined and easier,” Inouye informed TechNewsWorld.
He defined that in an in-person assembly, any work on a whiteboard may not make it into the assembly notes. Similarly, note-taking is usually not shared between members or may very well be idiosyncratic to a person’s note-taking model.
“Creating chapters and tagging the recorded meetings makes searching through archives much more efficient,” he continued. “Rather than trying to recall the date a particular meeting took place by checking your notes, you could search for the topic of interest or other information.”
“These tools could also benefit in-person meetings as well, as those conversations could be recorded and processed in a similar manner, so it isn’t exclusive to virtual,” he added.
Features Too Good for Paywall
The new security measures in Teams Premium have additionally attracted reward. “The security enhancements like copy/paste control and E2E encryption for groups are all excellent,” mentioned Forrester analyst Will McKeon-White.
However, he did query confining the options to a premium providing. “It’s odd these are partitioned outside the standard Teams platform,” he informed TechNewsWorld.
McKeon-White additionally had kudos for Teams Premium’s webinar addition. “The webinar offering is much needed from a competition standpoint and will help organizations further consolidate on one offering,” he mentioned.
While lauding the product’s translation characteristic, he additionally lamented its limits. “Live translation is going to be transformative for how organizations communicate,” he predicted. “It’s a shame to see this shift inside a paywall.”
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One characteristic of Teams Premium that appears to be drawing combined opinions is its branding characteristic.
“I find the branding-focused features to be interesting and potentially differentiating versus solutions from Zoom and Cisco,” noticed Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, Calif.
“It appears that Microsoft is headed down a more personalized experience with the Premium version of Teams, which I think will be useful,” Vena informed TechNewsWorld.
“The ability to create a more customized experience will be valued by some users, and I think the capability to add your brand will be valued by users who create video podcasts or conduct webinars,” he mentioned.
Ahead of Its Time
While an fascinating concept, the model extension characteristic could also be problematic, asserted Enderle. “Using a tool like this to advance a brand requires marketing to have a direct say in the result, which doesn’t appear to be the case here,” he mentioned.
“It would be like providing a medical tool without medical oversight,” he defined. “I don’t think you can do a brand feature without embedding marketing deeply into the resulting process. That isn’t the case here.”
Branding isn’t sometimes prioritized in digital varieties of communication and collaboration, added Inouye. “Further down the road, if virtual C&C becomes more immersive or more generally pervasive, then I could see this becoming more valuable,” he famous.
“This one may be a bit ahead of its time,” he continued. “No harm done, but it likely won’t be a key selling point.”
Inouye maintained that Teams Premium ought to assist Microsoft’s standing within the communication and collaboration market. However, he added, ” It is tough to say if it can shift the aggressive panorama in a significant manner, not less than not but.”
“Companies have scaled back on virtual events, meaning a company may see less value from a more integrated solution,” he defined. “Going with a third party for a handful of events may be just as good of an alternative as the more integrated solution.”
Word of Caution
Vena contended that Microsoft is taking part in catch-up within the video conferencing area as Zoom grew to become the market chief over the course of the pandemic, specializing in ease of use.
“But Zoom continues to have detractors over security concerns, and Microsoft has a perceived advantage when it comes to protecting privacy,” he mentioned. “This new solution should move the ball forward in raising Teams’ appeal, particularly with enterprise and SMB users.”
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McKeon-White added that every one the enhancements are logical and value-adds for the Teams platform. “My biggest issue with the Microsoft approach here is partitioning them behind a paywall,” he noticed.
“Any time AI/ML features are partitioned outside a platform, it provides an opening for competitors,” he mentioned.
There is loads to love on this rollout, as Microsoft continues to evolve its AI to ship extra precious options, famous Wayne Kurtzman, analysis vice chairman for collaboration and communities at IDC, a worldwide market analysis firm.
However, he cautioned: “Microsoft will need to add more benefits to retain the Premium value, as some of their competitors are likely to include some of these features in their base product. This market, despite economic headwinds, is likely to retain a high velocity of feature innovation.”