Big News You May Have Missed

The festive season is here, and the end of the year is just around the corner. For many, the end of 2020 couldn’t come quickly enough. Most of us have had quite a few issues to deal with this year, from sudden changes in business strategy to a rapid introduction of remote working.

As we look ahead to 2021, there’s still plenty of news to report for the end of this year. In the last 7 days, we’ve reported on Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack, and the rise of new features for Microsoft Teams too.

Here are the top stories from the last week.

Salesforce Purchases Slack

The global leader in Customer Relationship Management tools, Salesforce, recently announced that it will be purchasing Slack – the collaboration tool giant, in a massive industry-shifting acquisition. The overall cost that Salesforce is paying for Slack equals about $27.7 billion, making this one of the most significant tech landscape purchases in the last few years.

Moshe Beauford reached out to the VP and Service Director of Nemertes Research, Irwin Lazar, who told UC Today that there are various ways that this deal could go. Lazar says that Slack has the resources required to build out the collaboration platform and integrate Salesforce with other apps. The Salesforce and Slack dvoipuo could even go more aggressively after the leadership spot of Microsoft Teams. Check out the full story here.

Teams Together Mode vs Zoom Immersive Scenes

With the age of remote work in full swing, many companies are still searching for ways to improve collaboration between team members who can no longer meet face-to-face. While video conferencing has its benefits, many employees have complained of issues like “Zoom fatigue” from too many back-to-back meetings. Fortunately, companies like Microsoft and Zoom might have a solution.

Microsoft Teams Together Mode and Zoom Immersive Scenes are both solutions that transform the standard video meeting by placing employees in a shared virtual environment as avatars. So, how do the two options compare? Read our full guide to Together Mode and Immersive Scenes here to learn more.

Microsoft Teams Christmas Update

Microsoft Teams has released a new series of updates for users, just in time for the festive season. To celebrate the arrival of all the new features and functionality, UC Today host Rob Scott met with Microsoft MVP, Tom Arbuthnot for a rather festive news update. In the Christmas-themed vlog, Rob and Tom chat about Gartner Magic Quadrant positions, AI noise suppression, and apps in Teams meetings.

Other points covered in the conversation include the rising popularity of Teams, and it’s daily active user count, as well as the Skype for Business Online admin portal finally shutting down. Check out this video for an update you won’t want to miss.

Microsoft Introduces New Teams Calling Features

Microsoft is constantly updating the features on Microsoft Teams to make the service more appealing to enterprises of all shapes and sizes. However, one of the solutions that haven’t quite kept up with competitors in recent years, has been Microsoft Teams calling. Now that Teams has over 115 million daily active users, the company has decided to roll out a range of calling updates.

Starting now, Microsoft Teams users will be able to share and save call recordings and leverage integrations to make SharePoint or OneDrive a default storage location. There are also new features for combatting spam calls and merging calls for both VoIP and PSTN conversations. You can check out the full range of updates here.

Panasonic Closes Business Communications Arm

Panasonic, one of the world leaders in the technology industry, has recently made the decision to close its Business Communications segment over the course of the following 2 years. The company announced the decision in an email to its partners at the beginning of December, claiming that the future of the business was “unpredictable” and that a mismatch between market demands and factor assets meant the business was struggling to thrive.

According to our sources, Panasonic Business Communications has been losing ground to other competitors in the US and Asia, though the EMEA region was still doing relatively well. Learn more here.