Skip to main content

Microsoft Offers Businesses a Free Version of Teams, Its Slack Rival


Attendees walk past signage in the exhibition hall during the Microsoft Inspire partner conference at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., U.S. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg


 Microsoft Corp. will offer businesses a free version of its Teams corporate chat app, taking on Slack Technologies Inc. in the startup’s main market.
The new version is available for groups of up to 300 people and gives users unlimited messages and search, as well as 10 gigabytes of data storage, plus 2 gigabytes more for each team member, Microsoft said. Users also get free access to online versions of Office apps to let them create and edit files, slides and spreadsheets. 
Microsoft introduced Teams 16 months ago as an add-on for paying Office 365 cloud customers. Slack pioneered a free app that gets users to try before aiming to upgrade them to a paid version. Slack is also trying to appeal to larger companies. Microsoft wants to lure users who don’t want to pay, at least initially, particularly small firms. 

"We're kind of flipping the model on its head,” said Lori Wright, general manager for Microsoft’s Office 365 collaboration apps. “The competition looks at this as a way to get into enterprises and larger business, but that's a place we've been successful for a long time. To us, this is really about expanding the opportunity down to small and medium-sized businesses who haven't necessarily been Office 365 customers.”
Microsoft previously offered a free version of Teams to educational users. The company said in March that 200,000 organizations use Teams. Slack says it has 500,000 organizations and 8 million active daily users. More than 70,000 customers pay to use Slack, according to the startup. 
Users of the free version of Teams can also upgrade to paid Office 365 plans, which gets them more storage and access to more of Microsoft’s cloud-based Office apps, and Microsoft is hoping at least some of them do. The company announced the new product ahead of its annual conference for partners, which begins July 15 in Las Vegas. 
Microsoft will also preview a new set of worker analytics tools that look at things like an employee’s calendar and email to provide personalized insights to staff – the company considers it sort of a fitness tracker for work. It comes with a set of “nudges” for Outlook email. For example, if a worker schedules a lot of meetings in a short period, they may get a prompt asking if they want to re-schedule some of that time to plan without interruptions. When workers send a lot of emails to a co-worker after normal hours, the system may suggest they either clarify the urgency of the messages or wait until the next day. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Exynos Galaxy S10 visits GeekBench, still behind the iPhone XS in single-core test

The Samsung Galaxy S10 has been spotted on GeekBench and the numbers are in. This time, it's the Exynos 9820 variant for South Korea (SM-G973N), and there are notable differences with the previously seen results from the S10+  in Snapdragon 855 trim . The single-core result, in particular, is far ahead of any other chip in the Android world - the current Kirin 980 (around the 3400s) and Snapdragon 845 (ballpark is in 2400s) are no match for the next-gen Exynos, and early Snapdragon 855 figures are much lower too (3400-3550 depending on who you ask). In fact, the older Exynos 9810 gets closest, posting single core results upwards of 3600 and into the high 3700s under the right conditions. Even so, the iPhone XS remains out of reach. GeekBench 4.1 (single-core) Higher is better Sort by Label Sort by Value Apple iPhone XS Max 4777 Samsung Galaxy S10 (E9820) 4382 Samsung Galaxy S9+ 3771 Samsung Galaxy Note9 3642 Samsung Galaxy S10+ (S855) 3413 Huawei Mate 20 Pro 329...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bata to pay ₹9,000 fine for charging ₹3 for a paper bag

The Chandigarh Consumer Commission recently ordered Bata India Ltd to pay  ₹ 9,000 in fine for charging   ₹ 3 from a customer for a paper bag to carry the shoebox. Legal experts say the order is legally valid across the country and that stores cannot charge consumers additional charges for the bag if the product is purchased from the same store. The forum's order came on a complaint filed by a consumer, Dinesh Prasad Raturi. Raturi told the consumer panel that he had purchased a pair of shoes on February 5 from the shoe store located in Sector 22D. The store charged  ₹ 402, which also included cost for the bag. Raturi contested that by charging him for the bag, Bata was also endorsing its brand on the bag which was not justified. Raturi sought a refund of  ₹ 3 and compensation for deficiency in services. The forum slammed Bata for charging an additional amount for the paper bag. The forum ordered that a customer cannot be compelled to pay for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google Will Pay Apple $9 Billion In 2018, And $12 Billion In 2019 As Default Search In Safari

Google might be the king of search right now, but it's not an easy task staying at the top. Aside from being efficient enough to convince users to come to them, Google also occasionally has to make sacrifices. Sometimes, that's a $9 billion sacrifice to maintain its monopoly. According to a Business Insider report, courtesy of Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall, Google will pay Apple approximately Rs 65,000 crore in 2018 in order to remain the Safari browser's default search engine. That number will also climb to $12 billion in 2019 (approximately Rs 87,000 crore). If that seems like an unreasonable amount to pay for such intangible benefits, think again. After all, Safari is the default browser on everything from the iPhone, to the iPad and Mac. A lot of those users actually prefer Apple's browser to other options, meaning Google would in turn be generating a really high amount of ad revenue from searches. According to Goldman Sachs, the fee Google pays ends up be...
Post a Comment
Read more