Teams for Consumers

In a world of quarantines and remote work, apps like Microsoft Teams and Slack have become more useful to businesses than ever. Fostering collaboration and communication is so important to keeping employees engaged.  These apps have soared in popularity since working from home became the norm rather than the exception.

After months of relying on these products, people are seeing just how useful they can be. They make it so much easier to be responsive. They allow multiple people to work on projects together, even when they are geologically separate. Now Microsoft wants to bring that technology to consumers.

 

Advantages of Teams

Teams has always been focused on the business side of its use. The advantages it has over traditional communication applications could clearly be useful to anyone.

Back in 2018, a free but restricted version of Teams was released. It never felt like a tool that could be useful among a group of friends or family members. After more than a year of work, Microsoft made the announcement during its big Microsoft 365 reveal that it was ready to unveil a preview version of Teams to consumers. As soon as it goes live, anyone can sign up. Only Microsoft 365 subscribers will be able to take full advantage.

 

Not an Alternate to SMS

Microsoft does not want to position Teams as an alternative to texting apps. It is supposed to be a tool to help you plan events with friends and families, book clubs, fantasy football leagues, and other gatherings. The personal version will support multiple rooms, direct messages, attachments, video calls, calendars, to-do lists, and much more.  Very similar to the business version. Since the app is integrated with Microsoft 365, you can also use it to collaborate on office documents stored in the cloud.

 

Consumer Specific Features

There are also some features specific to the consumer version, like location sharing and Safe. Location sharing being the ability to show others where you are at and when you are on your way home or to a meet up. Safe is Teams protected environment you can use to store confidential and private information like wifi passwords, website login information, or rewards accounts. Its secured with end-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication, so you know your information will be safe.

 

 

Recently renamed Microsoft 365, the suite of tools is constantly being expanded for businesses and consumers alike. For consumers, first with the Microsoft 365 family plan, and now with added features and applications. Things like the play my emails feature will enable hands free text to speech so you can listen to your emails anywhere, even on the road. Added applications include the new Microsoft Family Safety which will allow families to manage screen time across devices and make it easy to check the location of family members.

 

More Consumer Products

Microsoft’s focus on consumer products for families and friends doesn’t stop at Teams. They launched a new website earlier this year, named Home and Family Resources. It introduces regular people to tools that help them connect, learn, and play at home. The site has everything from blogs to guides to help the normal person get the most out of their time at home.

To use the Teams preview, you can download it from the google play store and sign up with your personal Microsoft account. If you already use Teams for work, you can link your personal account to the app. One can switch between personal and business whenever you need to.

Contact Zunesis to find out more about Teams and other solutions that Microsoft has to offer.

Cloud Solutions or On-Premise? It’s a question our customers are asking more often, and it is undoubtedly one of the biggest trends in the IT industry right now. For on-premise, there is more to consider than how much new hardware/software is needed to put a solution into place. And for cloud, there is more at stake than a recurring monthly service cost.
For content services and content delivery networks (CDNs) that are faced with viewers that are increasingly consuming video “on-demand,” the decision to revamp their existing delivery infrastructure is forefront on their list of modernization projects.
While many Cloud options exist, and are definitely a viable option for many providers, for those with adequate resources, the on-premise HPE Moonshot solution has many clear advantages.
Multicast (true broadcast) is only available with on-premises (Moonshot) delivery. Cloud solutions are not multicast-enabled; and, as such, all content acquisition/delivery will be Unicast.

• The Multicast source relies on multicast-enabled routers to forward the packets to all client subnets that have clients listening. Each client that listens to the multicast adds no additional overhead on the server. The same load is experienced on the server whether only one client or 1,000 clients are listening.
• Multicast scales easily and uses bandwidth efficiently, which will help control traffic loads and conserve bandwidth. This benefit gives the ability to offer new services (generating additional revenues and strengthening long-term profitability).
• Conversely, Unicast is a one-to one connection between the client and the server. Each Unicast client that connects to the server takes up additional bandwidth.
Bottom line: Multicast is a better way to minimize network traffic and optimize bandwidth when multiple users are accessing the same live video source.
The HPE Moonshot solution provides greater network control; reliability; and, most importantly, dedicated network bandwidth (availability).

Moonshot has the ability to aggregate NICs for increased versatility in network configuration and routing. The HP Moonshot solution avoids problems associated with multi-tenant environments. Cloud solutions bring the risk of one tenant periodically consuming the majority of system resources, creating a greater sensitivity to scalability issues and potential security issues.
With HPE Moonshot:

• Better to control the ingest before encode
• Reduction in encoding cost over long term with owned equipment
• Increased ability to troubleshoot and RCA with accuracy
• Can use subscriber based multicast for acquisition
• Fewer resources are consumed both physically and logically
• Ability to further secure and adapt platform