Microsoft to move some Teams features to more costly 'Premium' edition
- Reference: 1673416692
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/01/11/teams_premium_more_expensive/
- Source link:
Teams Premium was [1]announced in October 2022, and a preview has operated since December 16.
On Tuesday, the software leviathan [2]revealed , in a note for its partners, that the product is scheduled to become generally available in "early February 2023."
[3]
Teams Premium requires an add-on license over and above a Microsoft 365 subscription.
[4]
[5]
But as Microsoft's [6]licensing guide clarifies: "some Teams features will move from Teams licenses to Teams Premium licenses."
Those features are:
Live translated captions;
Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user left or joined meetings;
Custom organization Together mode scenes;
Virtual Appointments – SMS notifications;
Virtual Appointments – Organizational analytics in the Teams admin center;
Virtual Appointments – Scheduled queue view.
Microsoft will keep those features free in vanilla Teams for 30 days once the Premium edition debuts, but after that will seek to upsell users.
The software giant has suggested Teams Premium will have an "expected list price of $10 per user per month" but will reveal the actual price only once the tool becomes generally available.
[7]
Teams Premium also offers live translated captions during meetings, and the chance to customize meeting spaces with an organization's branding.
Teams' Webinar capabilities gain features including the chance to approve registrants manually, creating a waitlist for attendees, emailed attendance reminders, and creating a "green room" in which presenters can meet and chat before an event goes live. Admins can determine what participants in a webinar see, too, to keep them focussed.
Meetings with over 50 attendees gain end-to-end encryption, and can be assigned sensitivity labels defined with Microsoft's Purview Information Protection data governance tools. Another security feature lets admins control who has rights to record a meeting.
[8]
Virtual appointments – a tool Microsoft suggests for staging chats with customers – can be conducted without Teams running on participants' devices.
[9]China's Hisense bakes Teams into Android-powered commercial displays
[10]Microsoft Teams: A vector for child sexual abuse material with a two-day processing time for complaints
[11]Where are EU going with that Teams antitrust probe? Microsoft wants a word
[12]Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams went down in APAC because Microsoft broke itself
Microsoft suggests Teams Premium is what orgs need to do virtual meetings right, now that they've become a regular occurrence. The software giant has also positioned the Premium edition as offering so many features that you can do everything in Teams and won't need to endure the misery of running multiple tools.
That sort of integration and bundling has been Microsoft's big selling point for its productivity suites for decades.
This time around, Microsoft will also try to sell you a price rise and a nasty little downgrade if you choose not to cough up. History suggests it will succeed. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/blog/2022/10/12/introducing-microsoft-teams-premium-the-better-way-to-meet/
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/partner-center/announcements/2023-january#9
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y76WzUeMYkdF1bFqE47q2wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y76WzUeMYkdF1bFqE47q2wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y76WzUeMYkdF1bFqE47q2wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-add-on-licensing/licensing-enhance-teams
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y76WzUeMYkdF1bFqE47q2wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y76WzUeMYkdF1bFqE47q2wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/09/hisense_microsoft_teams_display_collaboration/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/16/esafety_comissioner_csea_report/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/microsoft_teams_eu_slack/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/microsoft_teams_exchange_apac_outage/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
This is silly MS
We’re re just about to do an evaluation on moving to Teams from Webex.
Given that it’s a massive PITA to move in the first place this may very well tip things back to maintaining the status quo.
vanilla
Please stop using 'vanilla' to mean 'plain' or 'ordinary'.
Real vanilla is expensive and really nice.
There is no need to use a metaphor when perfectly clear adjectives exist in English, namely 'plain' or 'ordinary'.
Re: vanilla
Goes the same for "premium". There's nothing premium about Teams-bloat..
Re: Please stop using 'vanilla' to mean 'plain' or 'ordinary'.
No.
Re: vanilla
Agreed: how about "vulgar"?
As in its original (Latin) use:
"common"
Re: vanilla
I disagree. To me, vanilla implies that there are options, like hundreds-and-thousands, raspberry sauce and a flake and alternatives, like chocolate and neopolitan. If you've been good then your mum might let you have some of them.
Re: vanilla
In the UK, especially to those of us brought up in the 70s, the choice was vanilla or nothing.
(oh, possibly with "raspberry" ripple squeezed in if you were exotic).
Bait
and Switch.
SatNad's move to everything being subscription
begins here.
Enjoy the lockin folks. I cut my use of anything from MS in 2016 and do not regret it one little bit.
Re: I cut my use of anything from MS in 2016 and do not regret it one little bit.
Could you contemplate getting over yourself for a second?
...do everything in Teams and won't need to endure the misery of running multiple tools.
Instead you have the greater misery and fiscal pain of Teams for everything!
Personally, I think it's a stunningly silly idea to put all your eggs in one basket. When your single supplier suffers the inevitable SNAFU - and there's legion examples of this happening at Chez Redmond - then what happens?
I, for one, would live in terror if my entire business model was beholden to Patch Tuesday for any more services that it absolutely has to be.
Easier said than done.
What do you do then in the case of a collaboration tool?
Run multiple products in parallel.
It really does not matter where you go now the applications you run are usually a single point of failure, it is simple not possible to run something in parallel "just in case".
The underlying OS is becoming less relevant.
'the misery of running multiple tools'
'The software giant has also positioned the Premium edition as offering so many features that you can do everything in Teams and won't need to endure the misery of running multiple tools.'
Teams is just a bunch of separate tools they've acquired and stapled together with chewing gum, cat hair, and used condoms. That's why it's such a bloated, buggy, dog-slow, and inconsistent piece of crap. My life was much less miserable when we were running multiple tools that were actually good at doing what they do, like Slack.
Really, the only reason to use Teams has been (a) IT'S FREE so we're using it no matter how bad it is, and (b) Microsoft admins don't know how to work with or configure anything that's outside the Microsoft stack. So now you're removing (a).
Re: 'the misery of running multiple tools'
Have to use Teams for work (only used on a work Windows PC), agree that the resource usage of Teams is horrendously high. I have to periodically kill all the Teams processes just to get PC back in a workable state.
But what about fixing what people want?
Video on Teams is poor quality, choppy or blocky chosen at random.
There's no Full Screen mode that gives pixel to pixel matching for screen sharing. This is a regression, as teams used to be able to do it, but they broke it a while ago and haven't bothered to fix it.
On the plus side, their audio seems better now, almost rivalling Zoom, almost.
Re: But what about fixing what people want?
I'm beginning to think I may be the only commentator who has a company installation of Teams that actually works without any issues. We had problems at the outset but these were traced to firewalls and secure access - once those were dealt with, it's run smoothly. Audio and video are good, dropped calls are pretty much non-existent now and the overall experience is better than any Zoom calls I've endured or worse still Webex. Sitting back and waiting for the downvotes...…...
Re: But what about fixing what people want?
You're not the only one, it's worked well for us for at least the past couple of years now since we ironed out some early bugs. But people who are happy with things are less likely to make noise about it.
This "perceived" integration is a big selling point, yes. Until you realize just how badly the different products integrate. Maybe because none of them appear to be properly designed, but look more like an interns project that then got bombarded to primetime because it resembles a bad copy of a popular tool.
"will reveal the actual price only once the tool becomes generally available"
So, they're already lying through their teeth ?
Not only is Borkzilla not including the features that people want and need (aka good performance and no headaches), but it can't be arsed to lay down the rules transparently.
I thank my lucky stars that I don't need to use this shite on a daily basis.
Live translated captions;
But how will I entertain myself in meetings now??
This is the second time MS have tried to charge for add-on features to Teams. The first effort flopped. I'm not sure, at this price, the second is going to do much better.