Microsoft Teams usage jumps to 32, no, 44 million as Windows-slinger platform slides onto home workers' PCs
- Reference: 1584623796
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/19/teams_toys/
- Source link:
This week is the third anniversary of Teams, and even the most hardened cynic would find it difficult not to admit that it has been a success for the company, despite the recent [1]wobbles as demand surged from homeworkers.
As of this month, 44 million people* are using Teams on a daily basis, according to [2]Microsoft . Competitor Slack, with its 12 million active users, [3]might quibble a little with how that figure is measured. Microsoft defines it as users performing an intentional action, such as sending a message or replying to a chat rather than something passive such as closing the thing.
The figure is up from the 20 million active users trumpeted by Microsoft in [4]January when it reported financial results for Q2 of its fiscal '20 , but quite a bit off the 200+ million Office 365 users out there.
Regardless, it is an impressive figure. 440,000 employees at Accenture alone are signed up to use the thing.
Over the course of the coming year, Microsoft plans to further tweak its platform. One upcoming feature, the ability to read messages and write responses when things are running on low bandwidth or even entirely offline will be particularly welcome to those who found things borked beyond belief earlier this week.
Other changes include the welcome arrival of real-time noise suppression for those that insist on hammering their keyboards with mic turned on and a "raise hand" feature for moments when dropping an aubergine emoticon to try and get the speaker's attention just won't cut it.
In what is perhaps a nod to the eventual replacement of Skype for Business by Teams, it will also be possible to pop chats out into separate windows.
Because it is Microsoft, it is impossible not to fiddle with a product without a nod to firstline workers, and Teams is no exception to the rule. While the likes of HoloLens 2 make for impressive demos, a buddying up with wearable rugged Android tablet vendor RealWear is a more pragmatic approach for those sent out into the field.
The RealWear gizmo attaches to a hard-hat or similar and includes camera, miniaturised screen and audio. While it won't perform the crowdpleasing tricks of its considerably more exotic wearable brethren, it will allow a Teams user to share his or her view with a remote collaborator, enjoy a chat, swap information and snap the odd picture.
It also wouldn't be Microsoft without some functionality that is US-only, and to that end the company is introducing Microsoft 365 Business Voice stateside, aimed at turning Teams into a complete phone system. The rest of the world will just have to shout for the time being.
As for UK punters, the firm said today that workers in the UK's National Health Service would get free access to Teams for the duration of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
While there are plenty of goodies for enterprises (including new gizmos to plonk on the conference room table) consumers were ignored. That might all change at the company's upcoming "family" focused event at the end of the month. ®
Updated at 14:31 on 19 March to add
The firm told us earlier this week that as of March 11, 2020, it had "counted 32 million daily users of Teams". Microsoft got in touch shortly after publication to say: "As of March 18, 2020, that number has grown by 12 million to 44 million daily users around the world."
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/17/its_baaaaaack_or_not_microsoft_teams_suffers_a_tuesday_totter/
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/?p=234046
[3] https://slackhq.com/work-is-fueled-by-true-engagement
[4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/30/microsoft_q2_fy2020/
Then again, you can only have The One True Notification sound on Teams. You can't disable it without losing the call ringtone, and you might not want to miss calls. Finally, MS have spent months working out the most irritating sound in the world before pushing it out in the latest update last week.
We've been promised offline and more than one window for years in Teams, so let's not get our hopes up too early.
Let's not kid ourselves, Teams is only making headway because it's free, installed automatically everywhere with Office 365 despite what the user wants, and MS are knocking SfB on the head.
Thats a key point but not entirely fair. Its also at least no2. (to slack) in the UI/UX stakes. Its genuinely nice to use (imo)
This sounds like such a little thing, but it shows how Teams is developing.
It's still largely an unholy mix of OneNote, Sharepoint and Lync. Being able to permanently disable video would be nice, especially in these bandwidth challenged times.
Mattermost + Jitsi gives you more, for less.
You can disable video for the tenant and individually?
The 'raise hand' feature is essential for a busy meeting and has been requested for years. At least it is going to be done 'in a few months'
The biggest issue for Teams is the fact that it can only be installed per user!. Therefore every profile on a PC has a complete copy of the application in userland.
This not only wastes loads of disk space on a multi-user machine but also means you can't restrict programs to run only from key folders that are admin accessible. You even struggle to whitelist due to the fact that updates also need to run from userland to update it.
All so that a user could decide for themselves if they want to download and run it without have in g to bother to ask the pesky IT dept. Similar tactic to Chrome - but at least Chrome also offered a proper installer and Group Policy template file to manage it if the IT department wanted it.
all the cpu resources
Have you used Teams on a Mac? uses every last cpu cycle and I'm not sure if this is a feature but there's a nice flame and smoke effect near the screen when meetings go over an hour.
Re: all the cpu resources
Macs should not be used in production environments ( Outside of Starbucks that is)...
Re: all the cpu resources
Electron should not be used in production environments.
Re: all the cpu resources
Yes, I've used Teams on a Mac (High Sierra on an 8 yo iMac and, Catalina on a MBP) - currently running in background on iMac and using under 1% CPU. Had a two hour, 12-way videoconference a few days ago and no slow down (even when starting and running a Windows 10 VM alongside it on a second monitor - needed to refer to something in a Windows-only program).
Years ago I hated Macs but, nowadays with OSX/MacOS, I find them sound business machines - more expensive to buy (and harder to justify a 3-year write-off period) but less expensive to run in the longer term. Of course, YMMV - especially if you just hanker for *nix or Windows to tinker with.
Free access - with a price
Yes, we will give all of you free access. What we will not tell you is the actual cost. That would be an inconvenient truth.
You will pay, just not with money. We are allowed to read your communications using machines and gather all necessary behavioural data, as we are allowed to do so according to our brilliantly written privacy policy (which has hidden texts through a myriad of websites and hard to find links). Then all of that data will be shared with our valued business partners, who are are interested in doing the best thing for your health(-dataminingcommercialinterestoperation).
Thanks you for using MS - hope to see you again soon!
it's borked again
Been trying to access for the last 30mins. Then I was contacted by someone else failing to log into their meeting too, unconnected orgs.
I'm quite happy, I avoid the shite MS vomits out it's orifice as much as possible.
Re: it's borked again
'Vomits'? I think that you have the wrong end in mind.
Re: it's borked again
Nope, when the brown stuff comes out the unexpected end you know it's really serious.
"440,000 employees at Accenture"
Well yeah. Accenture signed with Microsoft, so their employees have it on their desktop whether they want it or not. Big deal.
Mine's the one with Teamspeak in the pocket.
>One upcoming feature, the ability to read messages and write responses when things are running on low bandwidth or even entirely offline will be particularly welcome to those who found things borked beyond belief earlier this week.
This sounds like such a little thing, but it shows how Teams is developing. They're looking at Slack, identifying the feature gaps and closing them, so that when The Powers That Be roll out Teams because it's included in their enterprise entitlement, the People That Actually Use It (probably to their surprise) don't hate it!
The fact that Slack is still fundamentally just a web page - requiring a constant connection to even read old messages on android for example - is an enormous pain point that Slack have yet to close. In fact it takes Slack years to close any feature gaps. We're only *just* getting the ability to group channels into categories in the latest update.