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Microsoft Teams Adoption Spikes 50% in the Last 4 Months

CMMA Blog

Microsoft Teams has reached 20M daily active users, up 50% in just 4 months. With this rapid adoption, it is obvious that teams all over the world know the value of easily accessible collaboration and communication tools. But Teams isn’t the only player in this field. The competition in the market is fierce .

Building a team is no easy task and creating an environment where all team members have a voice, where discussions can happen in real time, regardless of geography or language barriers and where teams can make business-critical decisions is even harder. That’s why more and more organizations are adopting Microsoft Teams. They know the value of uniting their dispersed workforce to strengthen culture, maximize engagement and, most importantly, increase productivity.

If you have ever been a part of a thriving, balanced and successful team, you know how amazing that can be. Along with their growth announcement, Microsoft has put in time and resources on some very compelling research on “The Art of Teamwork”. Microsoft Teams is designed to help every team achieve it. By following Microsoft’s Art of Teamwork Guide , your team can achieve the following benefits:

  • Team Purpose: Keeps teams focused, fulfilled, and aligned on achieving their objectives.
  • Collective Identity: Fosters a sense of belonging and helps team members work together as a unit.
  • Awareness and Inclusion: Enables teams to navigate interpersonal dynamics and value everyone’s perspective.
  • Trust and Vulnerability: Encourages interpersonal risk-taking in teams.
  • Constructive Tension: Serves as a generative force for new ideas, driving better outcomes.

The overall idea being, if you can achieve those five things within your own team when tensions or conflict arise, rather than pulling the team apart, it will lead to innovation and transformational outcomes including a thriving company culture, enhanced decision making and more engaged team members. And who doesn’t want all of that? If you haven’t already, get your team up and running on Microsoft Teams and put these “Art of Teamwork” ideas into practice.

Are you concerned that Teams adoption and an increase in Live Events will increase the load on your network? That’s where Kollective comes in – easy to demo, easy to try and easy to buy we will help offload up to 99% of the bandwidth used running live events via Microsoft Teams. Get started today for free!!

The post Microsoft Teams Adoption Spikes 50% in the Last 4 Months appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Live from Microsoft Ignite: New Browser-Based Peering Solution Demos

CMMA Blog

Whoa! That was a long and wonderful week. It was fantastic to be with my colleagues, our customers, partners, hopefully some new customers and all the other Humans of IT (#HumansofIT) last week in Orlando. Right before the show, Kollective announced our new browser-based peering solution.

The world’s biggest brands have trusted Kollective to deliver their live and on-demand videos to all their employees no matter where they are located for many years now. They have done this by installing the Kollective Agent. Today, no agent or download is required to instantly broadcast your Live Events in Microsoft Teams and Stream.

In case you weren’t at Ignite and missed our demos of our new peering solution, don’t worry, we filmed them on the show floor last week. These demos star our amazing Director of Product Management, Garrett Gladden (rocking his MS Ignite 2019 Tee).

In the first video, watch a demo of our new Browser-Based Peering Solution at work:

In the second video, Garrett demonstrates how Kollective IQ, our analytics product can instantly serve up the insights you need to ensure your videos are delivered and the content is being well-received:

See for yourself how our peering works by taking our self-service demo. 

Want to take Kollective’s peering solutions for a spin?

Deploy live video events in Microsoft Teams and Stream instantly. Live Video Streaming has never been so Simple, Fast, and Easy.

The post Live from Microsoft Ignite: New Browser-Based Peering Solution Demos appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Skype to Microsoft Teams: Adopt & Accelerate

CMMA Blog

There is a major shift coming for companies currently using Skype for Business – ready or not, Microsoft Teams is taking over. By July 2021, Skype for Business will reach its end of life, and Microsoft is encouraging users to migrate to Teams as soon as possible.

For any organization, big or small, adopting new technology is a challenge. For Microsoft customers, the transition from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams means changing how employees communicate and collaborate. This is no small task and could cause concern and quite possibly some backlash for S4B loyalists. Understanding the why and the how will hopefully make that transition a bit smoother.

Why Should I Migrate from Skype to Microsoft Teams?

In a constantly evolving and dispersed workplace, collaboration among companies, teams and departments has become increasingly essential to maintaining a connected, engaged and productive workforce. Microsoft Teams seamlessly integrates communication into a single application, utilizing fully integrated file sharing, chat, voice and video, making for a more robust communications platform that seamlessly integrates with the M365 applications you are already running, such as Stream and Yammer.

See how easy it is to set up a Microsoft 365 Live Event in Teams with this short video from Kollective’s Chris Gower: How to set up a Live Event in Teams

Is My Network Ready To Migrate To Microsoft Teams?

What may be preventing some enterprises from leveraging Microsoft Teams and enterprise video is the uncertainty around their networks. There are concerns that by democratizing video communications and increasing consumption of video, that their infrastructure will not be able to handle the bandwidth required. Kollective’s ECDN integration with Microsoft scales Microsoft 365 Live Events in Teams, Stream or Yammer. We give our customers the confidence that they can run live video streaming events to remote offices, to 10,000+ users and develop a VoD (Video on Demand) strategy without experiencing buffering or connection issues.

Optimize Bandwidth Usage With Kollective Technology

One of Microsoft’s biggest customers has achieved tremendous success implementing an internal video streaming strategy. They have adopted video for regional and functional broadcasts and implemented enterprise-wide webcasts across the organization. Over the past 2 years this company has seen a 6000% increase in video usage to 425 endpoints in 52 countries and 200+ offices at the same time. They are seeing 94% peering efficiency and their users are experiencing an unmatched user experience so much that they are rolling out Teams to a wider group of event producers. Watch Brad Anderson’s The Shiproom Episode 9 to enjoy a lively discussion with Accenture’s CIO Andrew Wilson on shifting to a modern workplace with Microsoft 365.

Start A Microsoft Teams Pilot Today

Although the deadline to transition from Skype for Business to Teams is over a year away, there is no reason to wait. In this phenomenal podcast Running Modern Meetings with Microsoft Teams , Tony Leraris comments “it’s better to get on the train when it’s moving slow, so that as it starts to speed up, you’re ready.”

Get started with Microsoft 365 Live Events in Teams with the Free Kollective and Teams Pilot.

Kollective’s integration ensures your broadcasts will be delivered to where it needs to be.

The post Skype to Microsoft Teams: Adopt & Accelerate appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Distributed Devices: Reaching The Edge In The Age of IoT

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The world of work is changing. From cloud computing systems to remote working opportunities, technological innovations are becoming an integral part of our professional lives.

As part of this changing culture, businesses are increasingly contending with how to incorporate the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) into the modern office environment. Wearable technology, smart gadgets and intelligent lighting systems are just a few examples of hardware that IT departments will soon add to their internal networks.

But just like any other machine on a company’s network, it’s vital that these IoT devices receive regular updates for maximum security and functionality.

This presents a complicated problem for IT managers to solve — with the IoT bringing new operating systems, new update schedules and thousands of new devices into the workplace.

Given so many of these devices will operate at the edge of the corporate network, how can IT departments connect their IoT devices at scale and ensure they stay up to date without putting a huge strain on existing IT systems and network infrastructure?

To understand these concerns, and explore the future direction of enterprise content delivery, we at Kollective are pleased to announce the launch of our latest research report: Distributed Devices: How Today‘s IT Leaders Are Taking Their Businesses To The Edge.

This report draws on research from 270+ IT decision makers across the US and UK, providing insights into what companies must examine when integrating the IoT into their systems and the role that Software-Defined Enterprise Content Delivery Networks (SD-ECDN) will play in the future of Enterprise IT and IoT update distribution.

The post Distributed Devices: Reaching The Edge In The Age of IoT appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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The T Word: Transparency, Trust and Microsoft Teams

CMMA Blog

As Satya Nadella prepared to take the stage last Wednesday morning at Microsoft Inspire, the tens of thousands of Microsoft partners and employees packed tightly inside the T-Mobile arena sat in anticipation of a Corenote speech from the man credited not only with the turnaround around of Microsoft’s fortunes, but with completely rebuilding company culture.

If last year’s speech focused on the importance of people-centric experiences and of measuring ourselves ‘not by technology for technology’s sake, but how we are empowering people’, this year’s keynote felt like a natural extension of that theme – addressing the importance of democratization of digital transformation, and of both corporate and individual trust.

Amidst the staggering numbers on display illustrating the rapid evolution of the digital workplace, HoloLens 2 conjuring up a hologram capable of real-time language translation, and an amusingly impressive augmented reality MineCraft demo that made Legoland look like an afternoon in the DMV; at the core of Satya’s speech, a simple line resonated more than any other:

You cannot claim trust, you have to earn it. Each day.

As effective as it was simple, that statement summed up the very reason that queues had formed outside the T-Mobile Arena more than two hours before the doors opened and the reason that Microsoft reaffirmed its position as the most valuable company on earth just two days later. Its importance and application was also perfectly illustrated by the first three numbers displayed behind Satya as he began his Corenote.

Trust is what forges the bond between Satya and his 100,000 employees, trust is what permeates the relationship between Microsoft and its partners’ 17 million employees, and trust is the way Microsoft will achieve Satya’s stated goal of having an impact on every one of the 7 billion people on this planet.

While these are undoubtedly grand figures with an impact on the very grandest scale, the statement resonated with me on a far more individual level.

Earlier in the week, when Gavriella Schuster stood alongside the Kollective logo during her Corenote speech, discussing the most impactful Teams integrations, and later, when Hao Tang, Senior Product Partner Manager at Microsoft presented Kollective as a Teams ‘Solution that Customers Love’ during her own session, the common factor that lead to these acknowledgements is trust. Trust between Kollective, our customers, our partners and Microsoft.

Gavriella Inspire 300x175 1

My first week at Kollective coincided with the bi-annual Customer Council ; an event at which a select number of our customers present to other existing, new and prospective customers about the difference Kollective has made on their organization.

Watching our customers take the stage to share stories and videos about the immediate and long-term impact Kollective has had on company culture was my first exposure to the ultimate example of trust realized.

Trust is not just a core component of the Kollective solution – giving our customers the confidence to host global, mission-critical live video events in the knowledge they can touch every employee regardless of location – moreover, trust is the foundation upon which every interaction at the heart of Kollective is built.

Now, more than ever, in an age of half-truths, fake news and misinformation, trust is the universal truth to every successful relationship and equally as important as the act itself, is the act of respecting its fragility and acknowledging the fact that it must, indeed, be earned each and every day.

While the most uttered, fastest-growing and exciting T-word at this year’s Microsoft Inspire was Teams, the most fundamental that has made all of that possible, is undoubtedly Trust.

The post The T Word: Transparency, Trust and Microsoft Teams appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Poly’s “Power of Many” Message for Businesses

Alexa for Business

Poly  made noise in the AV and workplace collaboration industry this week as it became the new face of the combination of Plantronics and Polycom .

The company is supporting its first marketing campaign, “The Power of Many,” with some high-profile announcements that focus on product integration with technology from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google . Poly made these announcements while at Enterprise Connect in Orlando .

In the days that followed the rebranding as Poly, the company announced:

The Power of Many

Common to these products is their emphasis on bringing people together, which is the message of Poly’s “Power of Many” campaign. The “power of many” also describes the functions that are brought together in a solution. Systems that combine useful functions are what you might envision when you hear the term “unified communications” — the ability to review one’s calendar, join a meeting, and make video calls from one device.

Along with this versatility, the goal is simplicity, which is key to the user experience of solutions that combine multiple functions. You could say that’s the main appeal of a solution that includes Alexa, making it possible to manage meetings and room devices through voice.

Poly’s solution announcements this week indicate their focus on a positive user experience. Common to each of them:  These solutions integrate with systems that people are comfortable with and want to keep using in a way that isn’t needlessly complex. One phrase on the Poly website touts the ability to “concentrate on ideas in the air, not devices in the room.” When people use workplace collaboration solutions, they shouldn’t notice the technology to an extent that is disruptive. Rather, they should be able to give their attention to the collaboration that the technology is making possible.

As new solutions enable us to do more from more places, companies are wise to incorporate those solutions in the workplace to attract talented people who want to be able to collaborate in a variety of ways and do it on demand.

The solutions that are easiest to use will be the most attractive, as long as they have the capabilities that people expect. Those capabilities are with us in a variety of solution packages. The power of Poly’s message is in its focus on how its solutions make it easier for people to produce the products, ideas, services and innovations that keeps their businesses growing.

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