Microsoft is at best a mediocre solution for voice services for a Teams environment

A few weeks ago we ran a survey asking people how many communications applications they used. 42% responded that they used 4 or more communications applications on a regular basis. If you read my interview with Jessi Gold last week, you probably had the same reaction I did - Yikes! That is a lot of context switching and information overload.

That is one of the many reasons why we worked so hard to embed our voice services seamlessly into Microsoft teams. It was to help reduce the number of apps people have to use and to let them get access to voice services in the context of their “system of record.” By the way, we did a survey on that as well, and we found that 80% of respondents, when asked how important it was for a single native dial pad for Microsoft Teams, said they wanted just one native dialer. They didn’t want a bot. And if you want to know why bots are a weak solution, then read chapter 2 of the Ebook!

Now the obvious decision if you want to have voice services in Microsoft Teams then is just to get them from Microsoft. Right?

NO! Wrong!

But you knew I was going to say that. After all, this is my blog on the 8x8 site so you would expect me to say that. However, in this case, I actually have facts and a compelling story on my side.

The first of which was breaking news as this blog post was being written. Microsoft announced last week they were backing out of a plan to offer 120 minutes of free PSTN phone service to their customers. Odd, because only a few weeks before they announced their intention to offer that service.

And that is what this week's chapter in our ebook is all about. You would think that Microsoft is the obvious choice. They dominate in so many areas. But this is not one of them. And if you want to find out why, you will need to read this week’s Ebook chapter, Can't I just do this with Microsoft?.

Cheers,

Todd