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Microsoft and Zoom Announce Partnership for Enhanced Web Conferencing
Coming early 2020, Zoom Rooms will be able to join Microsoft Teams meetings and Microsoft Teams Rooms will be able to join Zoom meetings. The news comes as Zoom and Microsoft announce a partnership to enhance conference room interoperability.
This interoperability will be available without the need of additional licenses or third-party services.
Zoom already integrates with other Office 365 offerings, including Outlook, OneDrive, and Skype for Business Server. Zoom also integrates with Azure Active Directory.
Laura Padilla, Zoom’s head of global business development and channel, stated that “Our joint customers want a seamless experience working between Zoom and Microsoft Teams. And through this partnership, we have developed an integration that will deliver a simple meeting experience for video-enabled conference rooms.”
Source: SoftwareReviews Web Conferencing Data Quadrant. Accessed November 4, 2019
Our Take
Info-Tech notes that many organizations have some combination of Office 365 with a variety of best-of-breed apps, which includes Zoom. The collaborative problem these organizations often face is time wasted from switching between different apps and end-user confusion from not knowing what app to choose for what purpose – especially if the overlapping apps use the same basic capability.
Microsoft and Zoom’s partnership largely removes this friction: being able to access Zoom meetings through Teams and vice versa enables a more seamless experience. This is a result to be welcomed by organizations who have long demanded this interoperability.
However, what is interesting as a general market trend is that Zoom continues its business strategy of choosing integrating with well-used suites and apps over building its own unified communication platform. As other ambitious suites might rise and fall, Zoom will remain.