Microsoft has announced a breadth of new capabilities for Microsoft Teams, including a cross-organisation channel sharing feature that’s uncannily similar to a service recently launched by Slack. 

The updates to Teams include various new modes for presenters, with Microsoft also showcasing new hardware dedicated to the video conferencing service. 

Of all the new functions announced at Ignite, ‘Microsoft Teams Connect’ is the one that many further the flames of the company’s heated rivalry with Slack. The service, which lets users share channels with both internal and external collaborators, seems to have almost the same word-for-word description as ‘Slack Connect‘.  

Slack has previously called out Microsoft for copying its work and recently filed an antitrust complaint with European Commission over Microsoft’s “anti-competitive” conduct.

Beyond Connect, the most eye-catching update is the ability to create interactive webinars – for internal or external purposes – that can accommodate up to 1,000 attendees. This includes a number of presentation options and host controls, such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting.

What’s more, until 30 June 2021, the webinars can be switched to a ‘view-only’ broadcast of up to 20,000 people in order to accommodate higher demand for virtual events. The same capabilities have been available for general meetings on Teams since August. 

Microsoft has also made steps to alleviate stress and video call fatigue with new functions for speakers. These are aimed at creating more impactful, dynamic presentations but also at keeping a more ‘natural’ connection with the participants. Presenters will be able to use ‘Microsoft PowerPoint Live’ which will enable hosts to deliver more engaging presentations with notes, slides, meeting chat, and participants all in a single view. 

There is also a dedicated ‘Presenter mode’ that allows hosts to customise how their video feed and content appears to the audience. These include Standout and Reporter modes that put the host’s video feed in different positions to visual aids or content. All three will launch in the coming months along with new Teams-focused hardware, such as ‘Intelligent Speakers’ that can identify and differentiate up to 10 people talking in a Microsoft Teams Room. 

Google has unloaded a raft of new updates for Google Workspace that regear it towards hybrid working strategies. 

The updates include greater support for frontline workers, time management capabilities and tools for strengthening collaboration. 

“We’re excited to announce new innovations in Google Workspace that will further empower all the ways work happens – and deepen its impact – in an ever-changing world,” the VP and GM of Google Workspace, Javier Soltero, wrote in a blog post. 

For frontline workers, the update takes into account the use of personal devices, such as the use of smartphones and tablets by hospital workers or retail staff. Google Workspace Frontline comes with all the necessary apps – Gmail, Chat, Docs, Drive and so on – but it also includes business-level support and security features like advanced endpoint management to keep sensitive company data secure.

There are also features within Google Workspace to build custom apps directly from Google Sheets and Drive, so frontline workers can collect data in the field, report safety risks, manage customer requests and streamline their work.

This bleeds into other feature updates for managing schedules and workflows as they evolve in hybrid strategies. In the coming months, Google will be releasing new calendar-based features that will help users specify working ‘blocks’ – indications in the calendar that allow teammates to see when they’re online and available for meetings.

This includes ‘recurring out-of-office events’ which will automatically decline invites, and there will also be a setting to let co-workers know where a user will be during work hours, whether at home or in-office. 

For engagement and productivity, Google is also adding features to minimise distractions, which will include basic limitations on notifications and ‘Time Insights’ that will provide information to employees – but not managers – about project schedules and completion times. Google Assistant will also be available to provide calendar details and also be used to join meetings.

Meetings themselves will be getting some new features, including a ‘second screen’ function for Google Meet where users can host a meeting across a mix of devices – hosting on one and presenting data or documents with another. This will also include a split-screen update for the mobile version on Meet, Q&A features, pools and live captions in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and French. 

Remote working will play a “huge role” in post-pandemic life and is very much going to be the new normal, according to Citrix. 

The cloud giant said that UK employees want hybrid working models, despite a strong desire to meet in person again. The option to work remotely, it said, makes for “happier” workers that stay committed for longer. 

The comments came in response to remarks from prime minister Boris Johnson, who dismissed the notion that remote working will become the new normal for British businesses. Instead, he suggested that people will have the desire to get back into the workplace and resume in-person meetings. 

His statement echos similar comments the government made in the summer after the first lockdown ended, which saw it urge people to get back to the workplace. The aim was to increase footfall traffic for shops and restaurants in city centres and on popular commuter routes and came after the CBI warned that workers must return to the office or risk urban centres becoming ghost towns.

 “While the prime minister is undoubtedly right that many office workers may have a strong desire for face-to-face meetings once again, this does not mean remote working will not play a huge role in post-pandemic life,” Mark Sweeney, Citrix’s regional VP of UK and Ireland, told CloudPro.
 
Research conducted by Citrix found flexible working initiatives have improved both the professional and personal lives of many UK employees. Around 46% surveyed by Citrix said they would only accept a role that offered flexible work options if they were to change jobs, highlighting a clear desire for remote working to remain, rather than Johnson’s notion of a return to the old ways. 
 
“A key learning we should take from the past year is that work is not dictated by a particular place, and should companies use flexible technologies – such as cloud-based virtual desktops and apps – to offer employees a hybrid model of working, then they are likely to see happier and more engaged workers that stay committed for longer,” Sweeney added.

There is significant evidence to back Sweeney’s comments beyond Citrix’s research. Recent studies have shown that the majority of people that can work remotely wish to continue doing so in some capacity beyond lockdown, and there are reports highlighting how businesses are changing their office space with hybrid models in mind. 

Salesforce is perhaps the biggest promotor of remote and hybrid work. The tech giant recently announced the ‘death’ of the 9 to 5, with sweeping changes to its office space and work policies. Even Googleand Microsoft, which have both offered more negative comment on remote working, have accepted that hybrid office strategies need to be looked at. 

Even the CBI, which warned of ghost towns in the summer, has tweaked its stance; it released a report in November called ‘No Turning Back‘ that also suggested hybrid work was here to stay. 

Intel and Google Cloud have announced a partnership that will see the two firms develop integrated services for network providers to develop 5G innovations across various platforms.

The collaboration is another step towards Intel’s goal to develop 5G networks with software-defined infrastructures and further evidence of Google Cloud’s ambitions in the 5G arena.

Telecom-based cloud architectures and integrated services from both Intel and Google Ccloud will help to accelerate scalable network and edge deployments, particularly with multi-cloud architectures. These are thought to be critical in achieving the full potential of 5G, edge computing and AI across many industries, such as manufacturing, retail and healthcare.

The partnership will focus on three areas, the first of which will be to aid the acceleration of Virtualised RAN (vRAN) and Open Radio Access Networks (ORAN) with infrastructure and hardware support. There will also be a Network Functions Validation lab to support vendors in testing, optimising, and validating their core network functions that run on Google Cloud’s Anthos for Telecom platform. The lab environment will also expand to help customers conceive, plan, and validate their 5G and edge application strategies.

The partnership also includes edge services developed with Intel’s compute-optimisation technology and blueprints to accelerate edge transformation in certain industries.

“The next wave of network transformation is fueled by 5G and is driving a rapid transition to cloud-native technologies,” said Dan Rodriguez, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the network platforms group.

“As communications service providers build out their 5G network infrastructure, our efforts with Google Cloud and the broader ecosystem will help them deliver agile, scalable solutions for emerging 5G and edge use cases.”

Google Cloud has been very active in this space. The firm recently announced an initiative to deliver more than 200 partner applications to the edge via its network and 5G service.

Mindtree has announced it has achieved the Application Development Partner Specialisation in Google Cloud’s Partner Advantage Programme. 

The ‘specialisation’ is an acknowledgement of the cloud firm’s expertise and success in building apps and services using the Google Cloud Platform.

​

Mindtree is an Indian-based tech with offices in Banglore and the US. The firm provides services for outsourcing, data analytics, e-commerce, mobile applications and cloud migrations. 

Google Cloud’s Partner Advantage Programme is designed to provide its customers with access to qualified companies that have demonstrated technical expertise and is designed for firms that show particular success in specialised service areas. For Mindtree, that specialism is in driving digital transformations with cloud migrations and application adoption. 

“Mindtree is committed to helping enterprises grow and scale their business leveraging Google Cloud’s world-class infrastructure and robust set of cloud solutions,” said Radhakrishnan Rajagopalan, the global head of customer success, data and intelligence at Mindtree.

“This recognition instils further confidence in enterprises seeking to migrate their legacy applications and workloads onto Google Cloud that Mindtree can effectively help an organisation drive their cloud adoption initiatives forward.”

Through its collaboration with Google Cloud, Mindtree has boosted its status as cloud migration and digital transformation specialists. For Google, it is further evidence of its cloud strategy to priorities migration and analytical services as it looks to cement its place as the third-biggest cloud provider. 

While they cannot match the sheer breadth of services offered by AWS, other providers like Google and IBM have taken different approaches and sought to specialise in areas of cloud computing,

In 2020, Google Cloud acquired a number of analytical firms and also migration specialists, such as Cornerstone Technologies and Looker. In May 2020, Google also announced that Splunk services were available in beta, with a full rollout later in the year. That partnership was also aimed at providing fast and reliable analytical services to Google Cloud customers. 

​

IBM is reportedly considering a sale of Watson Health, its artificial intelligence-based medical data service, in order to further streamline its business. 

Talks are at an early stage, according to sources cited in The Wall Street Journal, and the tech giant is thought to be exploring all options.

The sale of Watson Health would be another significant change to IBM’s business under CEO Arvind Krishna. He has yet to complete his first full year in the role but has already overseen multiple acquisitions, including cloud monitoring service Instana and Salesforce consultancy 7Summits.

The company is also in the process of splitting its business in two, which will see its managed infrastructure services unit spun off into a separate entity with the IBM brand focusing on cloud computing.

It’s part of a wider strategy to gain market share in the hybrid cloud market, following the company’s $34bn acquisition of Red Hat in 2019. However, going forward, it appears that Watson Health isn’t part of those plans. The WSJ suggests the tech giant may still continue running the service, but it is in the early stages of pursuing a deal. The company is thought to be exploring a range of options from a sale to a merger with a ‘blank-check’ company. 

IT Pro has approached IBM for confirmation but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Watson Health helps medical providers manage and process data and it generates around $1 billion annually, but it isn’t thought to be profitable as yet. The service was launched with high expectations for revolutionising healthcare with artificial intelligence, with IBM aiming to speed up diagnoses for cancer and other serious conditions. 

However, Watson hasn’t seen much success in the healthcare sector, the WSJ notes, “in part because physicians were hesitant to adopt artificial intelligence”. This lead to IBM laying off a percentage of its Watson Health workforce back in 2018. 

Cloud storage firm Dropbox has reported a ‘one-off’ loss of $398.2 million in its fourth-quarter report, due to its decision to sublease most its office space as part of a remote work strategy.

The company announced in October that it would be shifting all of its employees to permanent remote work, with the company only using a small portion of its office space for occasional in-person collaboration. As a result, Dropbox then moved to sublease the rest of its space to the market.

​

The cloud firm, which has leases in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, and Ireland, noted in its Q4 results that it had incurred impairment charges of $398.2 million after an assessment of its current real estate was downgraded.

“We reassessed our real estate asset groups and estimated the fair value of the office space to be subleased using current market conditions,” the firm noted in its report. “Where the carrying value of the individual asset groups exceeded their fair value, an impairment charge was recognised for the difference. As a result, we recorded total impairment charges of $398.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 for right-of-use and other lease-related assets.” 

Although this is regarded as a ‘one-off’ loss, it stands as a significant slump for a company that would have otherwise recorded a strong 2020 performance. In Q1 the firm recorded a profit for the first time since it debuted on the stock market in 2018. With the spread of COVID and the swift change to remote working, the company reported further gains in Q2 and Q3, the latter of which saw net incomes of $32.7 million, almost double the figure reported in the same period a year before ($17.2m).

Dropbox notably decided not to implement the sort of ‘hybrid‘ work strategy that has become popular throughout the industry, where employees can choose to work from home or in the office. The company has maintained that hybrid work arrangements could create two different employee experiences that could ultimately create “barriers to inclusion” and career inequalities.

Instead, it’s ushering in a ‘Virtual First‘ strategy where remote is now the “primary” setup for all of its employees and the day-to-day default for individual work, with the remaining office space being used for occasional collaborative work. 

The firm is also planning to spread further afield with on-demand, collaborative spaces touted for other regions, although these are yet to be announced.

​

Google Cloud has announced a new partnership with analytics firm Databricks to offer data-driven services to enterprise customers. 

The deal means businesses can now use Databricks to create a lakehouse capable of data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics on Google Cloud’s elastic network.

​

This will include integrations with BigQuery and Google’s Kubernetes Engine (GKE), opening up the chance to deploy Databricks in fully containerised cloud environments for the first time, according to Google. 

The deal is further evidence of Google’s cloud strategy to prioritise analytical tools and processes, which has been a key driver of its most recent acquisitions and new offerings. 

“Businesses with a strong foundation of data and analytics are well-positioned to grow and thrive in the next decade,” the Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, said. 

“By combining Databricks capabilities in data engineering and analytics with Google Cloud’s global, secure network – and our expertise in analytics and delivering containerised applications – we can help companies transform their businesses through the power of data.”

The pandemic has transformed businesses in ways that most experts thought technologies would do and as such, these technologies are now at the forefront of the so-called new normal. The key is scalability, specifically the ability to increase or reduce the use of certain services depending on the user’s needs. 

Google suggests its deployment of Databricks will offer a customisable service for analytics that can be customised to suit a businesses’ needs. The tight integration with Google BigQuery gives customers the freedom to choose a number of data analytics services in a range of sizes.

Similarly, Databricks for containerised workloads highlights one of the most rapidly evolving ways of working within the cloud. Kubernetes is swiftly becoming the de facto orchestration system for enterprise workloads and most AI and machine learning tools. ​

Trello has completely redesigned its platform with a greater push towards multi-team collaboration and third-party integrations to cater to remote working trends. 

The workflow management service is also getting a refreshed design, but it’s the changes to its boards and cards that will be of most interest to enterprise customers. 

“We are building for an entirely new era of teamwork – where people live in different locations, but work stays connected,” Trello’s head of product, Michael Pryor wrote in a blog post. “This is the beginning of a whole new Trello.”

The cards within Trello have been tweaked to improve workflows and also increase integration with third-party services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Salesforce. 

‘Link’ cards can now preview content from sites like YouTube, Dropbox and even Instagram with just a simple copy and paste of a URL. There are also new ‘Board’ cards which can render a direct visual link to another board to connect projects across Trello.

The company has also announced that ‘Mirror’ cards will be coming in the next few months, enabling users to clone one card to appear on a number of other boards. An update to one of those cards then updates on all its copies. 

The wider platform has also been updated with ‘Views’ which adds more collaborative layers to the platform by providing a collection of new dashboards that show projects in a number of different forms. The first is ‘Timeline’, which as the name suggests, lets users see how different projects fit in a workflow. Similarly, ‘Calendar view’ will display start and due dates across a traditional calendar layout. 

If your workflow is too big and spans across multiple teams and boards, Trello’s new ‘Table view’ offers a more simplistic visual. It pulls cards in from selected boards across your team and displays them in a spreadsheet-style list that can be sorted and filtered down to your exact workload. 

For data-driven business, Trello’s new ‘Dashboard’ transforms workloads and projects into tables and charts. It ‘visualises’ key metrics, such as due date, card assignments and cards-per-list to offer a different look at your operation.

All the updates have been ushered in with a refreshed logo and platform design with greater use of pastel colours.

Microsoft researchers are testing a new feature for Teams that aims to provide speakers on calls with a near-real-time assessment of the moods and reactions of their audience.

The ‘AffectiveSpotflight‘ is said to be built from a type of facial recognition algorithm that uses a neural network to capture and assess the expressions of call participants, monitoring for changes in emotions such as happiness, sadness and surprise.

The software is being developed by researchers across a number of Microsoft facilities in Redmond, Boston and Cambridge, MA, with findings expected to be revealed at Japan’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in May.

The system is said to be able to spot subtle movements, such as the shake of a head, a furrowed brow, and even a raised eyebrow. Each of these is then rated between 0 and 1, with positive emotions scoring higher. The person with the highest score is highlighted to the presenter, every 15 seconds.

The facial expressions of the participants are also matched to datasets in Microsoft’s Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which has expression categories for anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral.

“Public speaking is often regarded as one of the most stressful daily activities and is heavily influenced by audience responses to the presenter,” the research states. “In fact, studies that seek to reliably induce acute stress on people often involve giving a presentation in front of a neutral-looking audience (a.k.a., Trier social stress test). While research on audience responses in online settings is still nascent, there is prior work considering the impact of in-person audience responses, especially in the context of alleviating public speaking anxiety.”

The feature isn’t available on Microsoft Teams as yet, but it is very much in keeping with recent updates to the platform that focuses on wellbeing and combating so-called ‘video call fatigue‘.

However, this may be seen as a somewhat overly technical solution to a problem that is fairly easily solved with feedback, and it isn’t difficult to imagine how this feature could create further anxiety as it tries to reduce it.​