This fall, Microsoft has made a couple of huge releases. But, it seems that this company has not finished its surprises, releasing Microsoft Teams.
After Microsoft has dropped on the market a huge Windows/Surface device, it seems that this company has returned with its latest piece of news.
Probably, Microsoft was too excited to keep its latest addition to Office 365 hidden, which is why it posted a video to the event’s official kickoff.
Moreover, the main event has started with the same video, followed by some jokes like “we were just here, last week.” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has stepped on the stage to talk about collaboration, the “art of the team,” as the company has named it.
Satya Nadella, describes Teams as, “a chat-based workspace…designed to facilitate real-time collaboration while building up the institutional knowledge of a team.”
This new application was designed to draw together various tools into a single platform, for example notes, meetings, chat, and a planner.
An interesting thing is that the announcement of Teams’ release made by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella comes approximately five minutes after Slack published a warning letter to Microsoft about competing with it.
“With Microsoft Teams, we see an opportunity to create a more open, fluid, and digital environment – one with the capabilities and experiences of teams at its heart,” has declared Kirk Koenigsbauer, Office 365 corporate vice president, in a Twitter post.
The new Microsoft Teams is similar with slack and it also functions in the same way, offering persistent chats that can be open or private 1:1 sessions.
Moreover, the new Teams includes a familiar-looking sidebar with meetings, chat, files, and activity notifications. These conversation features can also drop meetings straight into chat, alongside notes, files and project boards.
How to assemble a high performance team and setting them up for success is one of the central pursuits for any organization,” has declared Satya Nadella.
No two teams are the same, no two projects are the same. There’s no universal tool for teams, but rather a universal toolkit we call office 365. Empowering teams is more than just solving any logistical challenge of bringing people to the same place.”
Of course, Microsoft already had an application similar with Teams, which is called Yammer. But, Yammer didn’t have what it needs to take on Slack, and that is why Microsoft has released another business chat app.
The new Teams will be a part of the Office 365 suite. Satya has described Yammer as a “bulletin board for the entire company,” and explained that plenty of teams are already collaborating using Skype for Business chats. But, he also added that a single and powerful app was needed to bring all of that together, that is why Teams has been born.
However, Slack will still remain an attraction for businesses that don’t rely on Microsoft Office, due to its independence. Several startups and students don’t need Excel or Word, and opt for alternatives from Trello, Google and Slack.
