Stop, collaborate, and listen: Microsoft Teams gets an Atlassian glisten Microsoft has given its collaborative platform, Teams, some Atlassian affection this week while dropping another subtle hint to Skype for Business users that it is time to stop putting off that migration. Atlassian, responsible for the likes of Jira and Trello, hopped into bed with Teams arch-rival Slack back in July 2018. The …
So many businesses looking to use a lightweight, always-on, runs nicely in the background, app for voice, video and chat communication as a replacement for those expensive POTS leased-lines...
Well, it's not so bad, I guess. I mean people will email you to set up a time to call you over your VVOIP application now. And you can port the old POTS numbers into your VVOIP application, if you can accept the resource drain and actually trust the app isn't going to quietly go cryogenic on you when it's backgrounded.
Of course, you could devise a small, always-on, hard/firmware dedicated client that just lists on your desk and runs nothing but the instant communications aspect of Teams. With a simplex privacy option too - say an earpiece so that only the called user can hear the caller.
With all that collaborative fun on offer, one might almost wonder why Microsoft doesn't simply buy Atlassian and be done with it.
Probably because it would almost certainly invite regulatory scrutiny due to consolidation. This kind of tie up, however, will suit companies already running both teams and Jira and will be broadly weclomed, except by Slack.
Also, with Atlassian being Australian, and the recent Australian data security laws, I suspect Microsoft might be a teensy bit wary of putting themselves into that jurisdiction.
Although they could just buy them, move all the development staff to Redmond and close that department in Australia, I suppose.
Adding to that the usual time it takes to roll out anything in my current job, I guess we will have S4B for another decade or so... (we are still using mainframe architecture for most business critical stuff, migration is under way - from assembler to Cobol...)
Yet another MS app that is not being used by businesses, so they have to hook up to the industry leading platforms so that they can show some business users.
If only they had listened to customers instead of know-nothing internal experts, then the downhill spiral could have been avoided.
You have to wonder if anyone inside MS has put 2+2 together and worked out that the future is not Microsoft shaped.
You can't add non-tenant Microsoft accounts to Teams without a lot of pain, and them being added to the Users list in the Admin portal. That's a real pain when you have contacts across multiple tenants.
Also, we use Polycom desk phones integrated with S4B. How's that going to work with Teams?
Definitely not feature parity yet.
Yeah, until MS provides a way to migate data out of Teams, no thanks. It's probably fine if you're a small shop, but if you're ever likely to merge or split your Azure environment due to company changes, there's no way to get data out of Teams and migrate it elsewhere.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
