What does your workstation look like; three monitors powered by a laptop, a desktop surrounded by the latest mic and cameras, or perhaps just a laptop with an external mouse and keyboard? Regardless of how you work, I’ll hedge my bets and say the way you complete your daily tasks has changed somewhat since 2019. 

Without leading us down the well-trodden path of how the pandemic has changed the way we work, it’s important to establish how the effects of COVID-19 on the workplace still manifest. The rise of cloud platforms and portals businesses were forced to adopt to continue functioning during lockdowns is arguably the biggest impact we’ve seen. This is exemplified by the fact a quarter of a billion people now use Microsoft Teams on a monthly basis. 

Even 250 million active monthly users, however, doesn’t translate into total market domination. In fact, over the past year, businesses have increasingly bought into an emerging trend of choosing different collaboration platforms for different types of workplace communication. Companies such as BT and Vodafone, for example, are using Facebook Workplace to offer employees a pseudo-social media experience. There’s a risk, however, that piling yet more digital systems onto the shoulders of already digitally stretched workers might inadvertently lead to a loss of productivity and disillusionment.

No plan is an island

Using such platforms in this way isn’t a new phenomenon, Meike Escherich, associate research director for the future of work at IDC, points out. Indeed, communicating with a distributed workforce means businesses need to upgrade their communications methods, with emailed newsletters and bulletins often ending up in spam folders too. 

“The biggest issue is that staff can be given all they need to do their job in a remote setting, but they’re missing the culture of the company,” Escherich says. “That sense of community, building loyalty, and support from superiors have all gone down the drain over the last year or so because businesses haven’t worked out how they communicate, how often they communicate, and what they communicate. This is a big issue for businesses to tackle.”

Although the intention to supplement workplace culture might be there, introducing yet another digital platform can also take its toll. Depending on their department, employees will have to log into a range of systems at once, which inevitably has a knock-on effect on productivity. In fact, RingCentral found roughly two-thirds of employees are losing over a month of their time per year just switching between different platforms. Its research also found that a large portion of employees found navigating these different platforms more annoying than spam and junk emails (45%), paying bills (52%) and even trying to lose weight (50%).

“Generally, the industry needs to recognise that none of these tools can be an island anymore,” says principal analyst for workplace transformation at CCS Insights, Angela Ashenden. “These platform providers need to look at how they fit within the ecosystem. If you’re going to enable productivity and enable people to be effective it has to tie in with all the other processes and happen wherever those processes take place. Therefore, there’s a focus around integration and how to streamline workflows across multiple tools.”

That is where collaboration platforms come in. Microsoft, for example, wants Teams to serve as a user interface window, senior analyst with Cavell Group Patrick Watson, says. Employees will, effectively, use Teams as a window into their applications, with integrations getting much better. If various providers integrate into Teams or Slack, he adds, users won’t feel bombarded by different apps because they’re effectively using one interface.

Dispelling the threat of shadow IT 

Although the likes of Vodafone and BT may well have good reasons for investing in Workplace, Escherich says she doesn’t think the trend of using more than one collaboration platform will be picked up by smaller businesses. The priority, for them, is to protect their IT teams, who would be burdened with a greater workload. “When we ask our clients about digital transformation and what is needed in-house to enable a hybrid workplace, the key issue is IT support,” she says. “It’s a big issue for business and even outstrips things like security or employee experience.”

Making such a decision may not be as simple as protecting IT teams, though, with shadow IT highly prevalent in regulated industries such as finance, legal and the public sector. As Watson outlines, establishing places for employees to go for both professional and social interactions is likely an attempt to control the realm of all employee interactions, as they may not currently know what’s being shared, how, and when. According to data Watson shares, 39% of executives in charge of technology know their business is currently using Facebook Messenger, 58% are using WhatsApp, with 10% using Signal and 20% using Telegram. 

“As you can see, there’s a large uptake of the consumer applications from employees, but those are just the ones the business owner or the technology executive knows about,” he adds. “These executives won’t necessarily have a clue about these sorts of shadow IT issues, such as the warehouse with its own private Whatsapp group. Within those groups, too, employees could be talking about orders and potentially sharing customer data, which is a dangerous area for businesses. That’s why we have seen a ban of applications like WhatsApp and Telegram, particularly compliance industries.”

Although there may be an appetite to phase out messaging platforms in the workplace, according to data from CCS Insights, WhatsApp is the third most popular collaboration platform after Teams and Zoom. Ashenden concludes that, by separating the social and professional aspects of the office, businesses are shepherding their employees away from private messaging platforms towards mobile-friendly solutions. 

“Teams, Slack, Workplace all provide a simple chat messaging capability within a managed environment, which is why the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google are investing in mobile apps and that lightweight chat. The high-turnover workforce isn’t going to buy into a productivity platform, but they might use an app if it’s easy and they can use it on their personal phone. That’s definitely one of the key pieces to this puzzle.”

HP has launched a subscription management service to make it easier for SMBs to manage Microsoft cloud-based licensing, following the release of Windows 365 earlier this year.

HP Subscription Management Service is designed for small and medium-sized companies to make software investment decisions based on reliable workforce intelligence. The service provides license management of Microsoft 365 as well as the full list of Microsoft cloud subscription services.

The product displays online visibility of software analytics and usage trending by user, department, or geography, helping IT teams to easily shift and scale their subscriptions as needed, said HP.

For channel partners, the new service offers a one-stop cloud-based product that allows them to sell Microsoft 365 and the full Microsoft cloud subscription library to their customers, along with HP’s licensing analytics and its premier partner support.

The company said there are additional features to help companies reduce costs and administration overheads too, while increasing security and compliance. HP customers can flex licenses up or down through pay-as-you-go subscription options, ensuring software spend is the right size as business needs change.

Through HP Subscription Management, companies can also secure their workforce from wherever they work with cloud security health checks optimised for the hybrid workplace.

“While IT leaders see managing costs and usage of SaaS applications as a top business priority, more than half still rely on dated internal tools and manual spreadsheets to track and monitor their subscriptions and renewals,” said Sumeer Chandra, global head and general manager of personal systems services at HP.

“As a result, it’s challenging for IT to know when renewals are happening, or how much is being spent on software licenses.”

The HP Subscription Management Service is expected to be available in the UK, France, Germany, and Chile by the end of 2021, whereas the US and additional countries will have to wait until the first quarter of 2022.

As part of the announcement, HP is also launching an Enablement Service for Windows Autopilot to help automate new device setup across the internet with little or no need to touch the device, a simpler and faster way for SMBs to provision new Windows 10 or Windows 11 hardware.

Additionally, it’s releasing HP Proactive Insights Experience Management to make it easy for IT teams to gauge employee sentiment and perceptions in the context of their IT environment.

Lastly, it revealed its Enhancement to HP Proactive Insights, providing advanced remediation capabilities like new security, system stability, and performance optimisations through automatic updates.

The launch of HP’s products follows the release of Windows 365 in August, Microsoft’s PC as a service offering, offering benefits like remote access to virtual endpoints, apps, and data from any device registered with Microsoft Cloud. This reduces the need for businesses to invest in virtual desktop infrastructure, cuts hardware costs, and makes patch management simpler for IT teams.

​Windows 10 users can now expect half the amount of updates, with Microsoft announcing that the operating system is shifting to an annual release cycle similar to Windows 11.

The move is expected to minimise the time spent downloading, restarting, and configuring the updates, which is often seen as troublesome and time-consuming by users.

Coinciding with the release of the Windows 10 21H2 update, Windows Servicing and Delivery VP of Product Management, John Cable, stated that Microsoft “will transition to a new Windows 10 release cadence to align with the Windows 11 cadence, targeting annual feature update releases”.

Following the release of Windows 11 on 4 October, it was announced that the latest iteration of the flagship operating system would move to an annual feature update system similar to that of macOS.

As a result, rather than spring 2022, users can expect the next Windows 10 feature update “in the second half of 2022”, Cable announced in a company blog post.

“As a second half (H2) of the calendar year release, Home and Pro editions of the November 2021 Update will receive 18 months of servicing and support, and Enterprise and Education editions will receive 30 months of servicing and support beginning today,” he stated.

Windows 10 updates are to be supported until the operating system’s end of life date, which is scheduled for 14 October 2025. After that, Microsoft will not be providing technical support, software updates or security updates or fixes for Windows 10. 

The latest Windows 10 update, which is available to download now from the Windows Update settings, includes stronger security to prevent attacks while using Wi-Fi networks, as well as an enhanced Universal Print feature that allows enterprise clients to handle print jobs of up to one gigabyte. Moreover, Microsoft announced that its users will now be able to use the Azure Virtual Desktop service to provision apps to cloud-based Windows 10.

“We continue to listen to customer feedback to adapt Windows to meet your needs as part of our ongoing support for Windows 10, and have scoped the November 2021 Update to focus on productivity, management and security,” said Cable, adding that Microsoft “will be throttling up availability over the coming weeks to ensure a reliable download experience for all”.

Slack has doubled down on its ‘digital HQ‘ plans with the launch of new features to help any user customise their workflow, no matter their technical prowess. 

At its Frontiers conference this week, Slack said it had «completely rebuilt and re-engineered» its communications platform from the ground up in a bid to empower users to make work life simpler and more productive. 

This includes automated and no code functions that enable organisations to tailor their Slack app to suit. The idea of a ‘virtual HQ’ is to place a common space (a digital one) at the heart of a dispersed workforce, but like a physical office, Slack is implementing ways to change its platform to suit an organisation. 

«Just like no two businesses run the same, no two digital HQs are alike,» the company said. «Teams need the ability to tailor solutions based on their unique business needs and we’re on a mission to make that happen.

«In fact, we’ve already seen thousands of organisations like Noom use Workflow Builder to automate routine onboarding tasks and offer essential resources to new hires, saving time while achieving 100% new-hire engagement.» 

The Workflow Builder is a core element of the new Slack platform, which allows users to automate work for themselves and other members of their team – all without the need to write code. The key here is that anyone within the organisation can create a workflow in Slack, simply by dragging and dropping existing apps and customising the way they work to suit. According to Slack, since Workflow Builder launched, more than 400,000 users have built workflows, with 80% of customers building workflows in their digital HQs being non-developers.

The communication platform also revealed ‘Sign in with Slack links’, which is set to be released next year. This allows users to seamlessly connect their tools using Slack account information. There’s also ‘Subscribe in Slack’, a tool to add notifications from other third-party apps that are integrated into a user’s Slack workspace. 

Slack-first app deployment will let developers host and store the data that powers their apps in Slack and be able to attach «invisible metadata’ to their messages. The benefit here is that other apps will be able to communicate with each other via Slack; for example, the different calendar apps of two people at two different companies can directly talk to each other and schedule a meeting through Slack when they’re linked through Slack Connect. 

«Everyday Slack users can now build and automate workflows for their teams without leaning on IT or writing any code. For developers, not only are they now free to focus on more interesting work, we’ve cut their deployment time down from days to minutes,» said Steve Wood, Slack’s VP of product, developer platform 

There are also new additions for Slack Connect, the platform’s external communication feature. Coming early next year, users will be able to collaborate with up to 250 organisations in one channel. And, later in the year, customers will have the ability to set up secure work environments for large, complex projects with thousands of partners right in Slack. 

«Whether you’re planning a large-scale event like Dreamforce with hundreds of vendors or managing a multi-year construction project spanning thousands of vendors, everyone has access to the channels, apps and people needed to get their jobs done,» Slack said. «This gives teams a monumental leap forward in collaboration, flexibility and control.» 

IBM has unveiled its latest and most powerful quantum computing chip to date, the 127-qubit Eagle processor.

Announcing the new piece of hardware at IBM Quantum Summit, it’s the first quantum chip developed by the company that surpasses 100 qubits.

Eagle is built using a new 3D packaging architecture developed by IBM which it says can support the development of future, more advanced quantum processors up to and including its proposed 1,126-qubit Condor chip, due for release in 2023.

The architecture is based on a heavy-hexagonal qubit layout – a setup that sees a qubit connecting to two or three neighbours. This configuration decreases the potential for errors caused by interacting neighbours and provides significant boosts in yielding functional processors, IBM said.

The architecture also places the qubits on a single layer while other components sit on different levels in a ‘stacked’ formation. 

The processor will be available to select members of the IBM Quantum Network starting in December.

The IBM Quantum Network is a collection of Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions, startups, and national research labs that work with IBM to advance the field of quantum computing. 

As part of IBM Quantum’s roadmap, Condor will mark a significant step in hardware advancements but further development depends on whether commercial dilution refrigerators can rise to the task of cooling such large, complex devices.

That said, the second announcement IBM made at its Quantum Summit may help towards that goal. The IBM Quantum System Two is designed to work with processors exceeding 1,000 qubits and will feature a more modular design with an overhauled cryogenic platform to optimise cooling performance.

IBM is on track to launch the system by 2023 which will help increase the scale of its chips.

The quantum computing capabilities of Eagle far exceed those of classical computers, Arvind Krishna, CEO at IBM, told HBO.

Classical computers encode information into bits represented as either a 1 or 0, while quantum computers encode information using a quantum superposition of a 1 and 0. This means information can be seen as representing a 1 or 0 – not both at the same time – a superposition is broken down to reveal a probability of revealing a 1 or 0.

The method of encoding allows quantum computers to process more complex tasks. Classical computers will work through problems in an order but quantum computers will approach problems differently, modelling all potential workloads and workstreams at once to generate answers much quicker. 

It makes quantum computing ideal for working through large data sets and for tasks such as cracking cryptographic keys, for example.

Of all the tools underpinning modern IT management, VNC may be one of the most prolific. First developed in the mid-1990s by RealVNC, it’s spent the past three decades enabling IT teams to access remote systems throughout their estate, and has found its way into the toolbelt of every support technician.

It may seem like a simple tool – and in many ways, it is. The underlying RFB protocol that powers VNC-based remote access tools hasn’t changed all that much since it was first introduced, and although its open-source origins have resulted in a huge number of different VNC solutions, they all share most of the same core capabilities. 

This can lead many organisations to treat remote access software as ”part of the furniture”; something that’s useful to have around, but not worth giving any particular thought or consideration to. Indeed, when selecting a VNC solution, many IT professionals simply gravitate towards the first option that comes to mind.

However, while remote access software may not necessarily be a transformative part of your IT stack, selecting a provider should be given a significant amount of scrutiny. Not only is it a foundational part of many operational tasks, making the wrong choice can have serious potential consequences further down the line, and there are a number of important questions that any IT department should be asking of their potential partners.

For instance, certain options may present unforeseen logistical challenges, like platform compatibility. Just because your chosen flavour of remote access software allows technicians to access Windows desktops doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to play nicely with every operating system, and that could be a problem if you also need to access Linux-based servers. Some providers will even support connections from mobile devices, giving technicians remote access even while on the go.

Deployment is also something that bears consideration. If you’re managing a large fleet of devices, you’ll need a remote access provider that supports automated remote configuration and deployment. If not, support staff will be faced with the tedious prospect of manually installing agents on every machine, one by one. Alternatively, you may want to opt for a provider that offers agentless, on-demand connections to reduce on-device footprints.

Connectivity, meanwhile, is frequently one of the most frustrating elements of IT support, particularly with remote access software that involves laboriously configuring firewalls and port access rules to permit connections. Modern enterprise-level vendors like RealVNC, by contrast, offer cloud-based connection brokering that bypasses fiddly firewall customisation, as well as direct peer-to-peer connections for high-security, privacy-conscious or offline environments.

You should look at performance, too. While the fundamental technology underpinning VNC may not have changed all that much in the last 30 years, it isn’t always implemented as efficiently as it could be, so pay attention to any performance guarantees offered by vendors in order to ensure that your remote sessions are as seamless as possible. 

The biggest area of focus, however, should be security. The purpose of remote access software is to give IT teams an easy way to interact with systems from wherever they are, including back-end servers as well as employee desktops and laptops. By definition, then, this software will likely be installed on most – if not all – of a company’s machines. 

While this is convenient for providing support to colleagues, it can be a double-edged sword under the wrong circumstances. If your technicians can access every computer in your estate from anywhere in the world, it also means that if an intruder gains access to your systems, then they can too. Think of it like giving your neighbour a spare key to your house; it can come in handy for a great many things, but you have to be absolutely certain that you trust them to keep it safe.

This isn’t just about making sure that potential suppliers provide robust privilege management and account authentication options – although these are essential for preventing account takeovers and exploitation by insider threats. It’s also about making sure you trust the security of the software itself.

Open source technology has a reasonably good record for security, but instances like the Heartbleed OpenSSL bug prove that it’s not immune from being compromised. Commercial vendors, on the other hand, can take the foundation created by open source protocols and layer additional protections on top of it, as well as proactively monitoring for potential bugs and vulnerabilities before they become an issue.

Of course, that’s not to say that vendors should be implicitly trusted. Over the last several years, we’ve seen a number of high-profile supply chain attacks on vendors like Kaseya, Solarwinds and more, which have allowed hackers to smuggle malware into customers’ environments. It’s therefore prudent to treat all vendors with a healthy dose of scepticism and to make sure that you’re comfortable with the level of security they offer, as well as the data they’re collecting and storing from your activity.

RealVNC’s offering, VNC Connect, has been built from the ground up for business deployments, specifically tailored to meet these needs. It offers a wide range of automated deployment options, integration with existing enterprise tools, comprehensive platform support and a battery of security protection, including 256-bit AES encryption, multi-factor authentication and granular permissions controls.

It’s also built by the original authors of the RFB protocol, so it’s optimised for performance with patented technology to help keep connections stable even when faced with low bandwidth. It also includes printing, chat and file transfer functionality, and a robust management console.

Remote access software may not be the newest technology in the world of IT, and it’s certainly not the sexiest – but that doesn’t make it any less important. It’s one of the most versatile and widely-used IT tools in the world, and it deserves to be chosen with an appropriate level of care. You wouldn’t leave the keys to your house under the doormat – so don’t do the same with the keys to your IT estate.

Learn more about RealVNC’s services

AWS and IBM are joining forces to combine their cloud tools for oil companies to use to help them manage their data while allowing them to overcome barriers like data residency requirements.

The two companies will combine the IBM Open Data for Industries for IBM Cloud Pak for Data and the AWS Cloud to serve energy customers. This is built on Red Hat OpenShift and will run on the AWS Cloud in order to make it easier for customers to run workloads on the platform and on-premises.

The collaboration, which aims to reduce data barriers in the energy industry, will allow customers to run OSDU Data Platform applications, an open source data platform for the energy industry, while addressing data residency requirements.

The companies claim that their energy customers are facing pressure to reduce greenhouse gases as demand for affordable energy continues to rise. To do this, companies need new products to help them drive efficiencies to free up capital, time, and resources to invest in new sustainable energy sources for the future.

IBM and AWS said that data and digital technologies can help navigate this transition, although an IBM survey from last year found that less than half of oil and gas executive respondents are using data to drive this innovation. The two companies underlined that this is partly because most of the digitisation efforts have been in proprietary closed systems, hindering the ability to combine and maximise the value of data.

«Much of the data needed to solve the complex energy challenges, such as superior subsurface decisions, already exists, yet is untapped. This is because one of the greatest values of that data is derived when it can be effectively combined, but usually this data is locked by data residency requirements, legacy applications or proprietary data formats,» said Bill Vass, vice president of engineering at AWS.

«By collaborating with IBM and leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, we will be able to offer customers a global, seamless offering with the flexibility to run on virtually any IT infrastructure and drive longer-term digital innovation.»

In October, Amazon also announced it invested in three companies developing sustainable technologies through its $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund programme. The fund was announced in 2020 to support sustainable investments, and these latest funding agreements brought its portfolio of companies to 11.

Kyndryl has signed a cloud migration partnership with Microsoft, considered to be the first major deal for the company since its official split from IBM.

The two companies will develop new products built on the Microsoft Cloud to drive digital transformation for customers, and Microsoft has become Kyndryl’s only Premier Global Alliance Partner.

The companies are set to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, introduce AI innovations, and help transfer more mission critical workloads to the cloud. They will also jointly work on a co-innovation lab where they will build products on the Microsoft Cloud, with Kyndryl making them available on Microsoft’s AppSource and on the Azure Marketplace.

In return, Microsoft will make products developed by the two companies available for its global enterprise sales force as well as creating a training programme for Kyndryl’s nearly 90,000 employees, dubbed Kyndryl University for Microsoft, which has been designed to teach workers how to best use Microsoft’s cloud tools.

“As an independent company, we’re investing in our partner ecosystem to support the success of our customers, and we’re focused on expanding our market opportunity across cloud, data, security, and intelligent automation,” said Martin Schroeter, chairman and CEO of Kyndryl. “In this landmark relationship with Microsoft, Kyndryl is matching our deep expertise in mission-critical IT systems with the benefits of Microsoft Cloud to be at the heart of progress for our global customers.”

Kyndryl completed its previously-announced spin-off from IBM last week, which it hoped would give the business more freedom to pursue new opportunities. The company now claims to be the world’s largest IT infrastructure provider with around 90,000 professionals worldwide, and is looking to deliver advisory, implementation, and managed services to over 4,000 global customers. The company also hinted it was looking to form new partnerships in new areas, like application 5G networks.

IBM temporarily retained 19.9% equity ownership of the new company, with shareholders receiving one Kyndryl share for every five IBM shares owned. The giant would also continue on as Kyndryl’s largest customer, and Kyndryl would be IBM’s largest customer in return, as revealed by Sam Maatallah, general manager of Kyndryl strategic markets.

Maatallah said there is still a strong relationship between the two companies and they were going to continue to team up and create products together. However, he also underlined the new freedom Kyndryl has to team with other players in the market.

“Unleashed from IBM, we have the freedom to invest for growth, while expanding our ecosystem of strategic partners and services capabilities,” said Maatallah. “As an independent Kyndryl, we’ll work with a much bigger ecosystem unlocking more opportunities to participate across platforms.”

IBM’s decision to split its business in half by spinning off its infrastructure services unit into a separate company was revealed a year ago, which saw it end a strategy that saw it try to shift towards cloud growth while keeping its legacy business. Following the split, IBM said that it would then focus entirely on its AI capabilities and the hybrid cloud, which it described as a $1 trillion opportunity.

​Apple has unveiled a new package of support services designed to help small business IT teams manage their employee devices.

Providing businesses use Apple hardware, IT teams will now be able to manage all their employees’ technology needs using the new suite of tools aimed at assisting the onboarding of new team members and providing oversight on the workforce’s IT.

Dubbed Apple Business Essentials, the package includes is 24/7 phone support for IT managers and end-users, business iCloud storage, device management capabilities, and on-site repairs for businesses of 500 employees or fewer.

IT administrators are also able to bundle certain rules and required apps to different types of employees. For example, if the design team needs a specific suite of apps, they can be bundled into a ‘Collection’ and sent automatically to the team members’ devices.

Specific VPN and Wi-Fi access configurations can also be pre-determined and added to a collection to easily apply those settings to the employees who need them.

Smart user groups also allow IT teams to group employees based on factors like location, department, and job role, which can make applying these collections much easier.

For users being imported from Microsoft Azure Active Directory, they will also receive their apps and settings once added to a smart user group.

Business customers will also eventually receive priority AppleCare support to resolve any issues quickly, although they will need to specifically purchase a plan featuring AppleCare+ for Business Essentials in order to be eligible. Details for these plans will not be unveiled until spring 2022.

Apple is also touting onsite same-day repairs available to businesses in as little as 4 hours to minimise downtime. The caveat is that onsite repairs are only available on certain iPhone models, which haven’t been specified, and will be supported only in specific cities. Apple said each plan will only have two repairs available and these refresh annually.

The service is now available in beta before the full launch in spring 2022. Currently only available to US-based SMBs, plans start at $2.99 (£2.23) per month for a single device, $6.99 (£5.22) per month for a multi device plan, and $12.99 (£9.70) per month for a multi device plan with extra storage.

IT Pro contacted Apple for more information on when the UK can expect to see the service but it declined to offer any further information at this time.

«As your business grows, you may find yourself managing an increasing number of devices for your expanding team,» said Susan Prescott, vice president of enterprise and education marketing at Apple. «We understand that the IT needs of your employees, on top of everything else you’re already doing, is a lot to take on.

«To help you with that, we’re introducing a new service which brings together device management, storage, and support into one simple subscription for small businesses with up to 500 employees.»

​Microsoft and Meta have announced a partnership that will see features from both companies’ collaboration platforms integrate into one another to allow for cross-platform capabilities.

Formerly known as Facebook Workplace, Workplace by Meta will soon integrate features from Microsoft Teams into its own platform, such as livestreaming Teams video directly into Workplace groups.

The integration goes both ways and it will see certain Workplace content also becoming available to users on Teams.

Workplace will be integrated into Microsoft’s software using an app within Teams which can be pinned to its navigation bar, if a user wishes. Once selected, a Workplace ‘pane’ will become visible to the side of the UI, which can easily be hidden or re-opened.

The move is a significant step for the two platforms the collaboration software market as a whole. With the launch of Workplace by Facebook in late 2016 being closely followed by Microsoft Teams in March 2017, the two platforms were considered rivals in a contested market that had, up until then, been dominated by the likes of Slack.

Although Workplace is pitched as a much more rounded tool for creating company forums, and Teams is better suited for instant collaboration between smaller teams, the two platforms effectively target the same enterprise audience.

“One thing I learned from the pandemic is that companies don’t just rely on one tool to get their work done, so it is our responsibility as leaders in the space to make sure the tools they use integrate and interoperate with each other,” said Jeff Teper, CVP product and engineering at Microsoft Teams.

Users on both platforms will also be able to interact with meetings hosted on the other, such as commenting and offering emoji-driven reactions, without having to swap apps.

Workplace by Meta said Vodafone, Flight Centre Travel Group, and Lockton – three of its customers – have already been trialling the integration. Flight Centre Travel Group said they use Workplace to foster a cross-company community and use Teams for cross-company collaboration, adding that the integration allows staff to access the information they need quicker.

Ujjwal Singh, head of Workplace at Meta, also said the integration had specifically been requested by Workplace customers Vodafone and Accenture, according to CNBC.

«The way our customers end up using it is customers use the complementary features, not the competing features,» he told the broadcaster. «There are customers that are just Workplace shops, and then there are customers that are just Teams shops. This is really for those customers that use both.»

The announcement deepens the partnership between the two companies as they vie for market share in the collaboration space. Workplace already supports integration into Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, and the Office 365 suite.

Workplace can also be integrated into Microsoft Azure AD and was named in the top 15 apps used on the platform in 2020. Additionally, Microsoft Teams will become available on Meta Portal starting in December.

The integration comes as a free update which is available to download now, though customers will have to wait until later in 2022 before they can stream meetings and broadcasts from Teams into Workplace.