Teams Rooms EMEA Monthly (January) | 2023 Look Back
Teams Room EMEA Monthly Title

Teams Rooms EMEA Monthly (January) | 2023 Look Back

This issue is somewhat different from the previous issues. It's an opportunity to reflect on the past year and prepare for 2024.

I hope you got some time during Christmas and New Years to relax, be with family, good food and perhaps have a drink or two (I did). This holiday season ended a big year. Many challenges occurred in 2023, but 2024 is a fascinating time to observe the developments in the UC and Technology space!

It's worth mentioning that I will be at #ISE2024 if your there it’d be great to connect in person!

2023 - The Year that was Hybrid

23' Was the year of Hybrid Work

When reviewing 2023, we can see the sentiment changed significantly over 12 months. It began with how can businesses enable employees to work and meet from any location? How can integrators help their customers in implementing a hybrid strategy? What solutions do the OEMs need to provide for this? Android or Windows?

Many people were unaware of their knowledge gaps. They were very concerned about room dimensions, usage scenarios, the optimal technology for each etc.  

Next, the tone changed to "it's just work!". It appeared that businesses knew what they had to do, but in the economic situation, achieving it was the difficult part. This same situation pushed businesses to seek cost reductions and to merge their IT services with many opting for #MicrosoftTeams as their only collaboration solution. For integrators, this meant they were setting up more #MicrosoftTeamsRooms than ever.

After that, #GenerativeAI, which was growing worldwide, began to affect businesses - ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Copilot, Bard and many other AI services emerged, and everyone had to learn again, trying to comprehend the good (and possibly bad) impact of AI on their business.

Our OEM partners had already introduced AI powered features such as visual framing and noise cancellation, but the new and exciting app that Microsoft launched was #IntelligentRecap, which was available in the desktop client with #TeamsPremium. The most common question at the end of the year was how to use this experience with the appropriate hardware in meeting rooms.

The year 2023 was the hybrid year…

Here's a link to the full list Teams Rooms certified systems and peripherals on Microsoft Learn.

2024 - Intelligent Rooms are the Future

24' Meeting will get intelligent

Anyone can see that the use of AI-powered generative tools in all kinds of business activities will be the trend of 2024, with a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of this technology. Meeting rooms will not be left out. The recent news that Speaker Recognition will be extended to existing devices in early 2024 is expected to reach more customers than ever - and that's not even counting products like #MicrosoftPlaces coming soon (Exciting stuff).

And that's only Microsoft, when you consider the OEM partners, they are already creating innovations with AI embedded, enabling features that would have been impossible a few years ago. And more than ever, customers need reliable and skilled integrators to help them through this change.

We are moving towards a future where the technology is invisible, and humans can simply communicate. We already have that with a feature we often don't notice - noise cancellation. It's always on in Microsoft Teams and it always makes sure that everyone can speak clearly with no background noise. It's not something that need to set up or adjust, it's just there improving meetings.

The same will happen for meeting room hardware. Once the design preferences are satisfied for any given meeting space, the hardware will provide such a smooth and integrated experience for all meeting participants that it fades away. We already see that in the multi-camera and centre-of-room AI driven solutions arriving right now, innovations that enable inclusive and fair meetings automatically.

Businesses are adopting a more systematic way of planning and designing their offices. A future where technology choices are made together with furniture, material, and environmental factors. What has been successful so far will not be what brings success in the future.

Future expansion of this industry will depend on new ways to reach the market, hardware innovation, AI powered features and deployment partners who design and implement solutions for customers that match their workforce, office space and hybrid work objectives using design thinking.

Check out these resources for more on how to get started with Copilot and make the most of your investment in Teams apps:  

No matter what, 2024 will be a big year!

Tom Halards

#MicrosoftEmployee #MicrosoftAdvocate

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