Petri.com readers have already demonstrated their affinity to Microsoft Teams.
According to a recent survey, 52% of these IT pros reported that they’re using the collaboration platform, and another 17% said they plan to adopt it in the next 24 months.
And if Microsoft has its way, that percentage will rise significantly as the workforce shifts dramatically to videoconferencing from home offices instead of meeting face to face.
To connect with buyers, marketers should catch this wave and get ready to advise corporate customers on the ins and outs of Teams collaboration.
Since the coronavirus pandemic turned us into a nation of telecommuters, Zoom videoconferencing has commanded a large share of brand voice, both positive and negative. Even as the stock market tanked in the first days of the U.S. COVID-19 scare, Zoom Video Communications saw a 275% boom as companies and individual users found themselves communicating by video — in many cases, for the first time.
But Zoom’s high profile has brought unwanted attention from hackers. “Zoombombing” has joined the lexicon alongside “social distancing” as bad actors use social-engineering tricks to gain unwanted access to Zoom conferences. It’s also uncovered a range of vulnerabilities in the software itself.
Enter Microsoft Teams. In mid-March, Microsoft serendipitously announced a slew of new features in honor of the platform’s third birthday. It also announced that it had added 12 million new Teams users in the first week of domestic social distancing, and it’s extending support for teams of 10,000 members, up from the previous limit of 5,000. Even as it announced last week that its user base has grown from 10 million monthly to 200 million daily participants because of the demands of remote work and education, Microsoft capitalized on what it characterizes as its superior security compared with Zoom.
Microsoft 365 Corporate VP Jared Spataro released a widely circulated blog post that touts Team’s privacy and security controls for videoconferences. While it doesn’t single out Zoom, the message is clear: Security-conscious organizations should opt for Teams to protect themselves.
The tech landscape is rapidly shifting with the rest of the economy, and your IT buyers are working overtime to identify and deploy the best solutions for a vastly more dispersed workforce.
Corporate partners who have a handle on the technical requirements and security features of Microsoft Teams will have social momentum behind them — as well as the weight of Microsoft’s marketing and product development.
