We are in a new era of communication. Mostly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, communication applications have become increasingly popular in recent months. We are now in the midst of what I call the Communication App Wars, where Microsoft is competing with its Skype and Microsoft Teams services. Microsoft Teams is fighting on a couple of fronts. It is, of course, positioned as workplace collaboration tool that competes with Slack. In fact, Teams has excelled against its main competitor. Then there’s the other front where Teams is battling pure video communication tools, like Zoom. And it’s in this area where Microsoft faces more of a challenge. Specifically, adding tools to make Teams compete with Zoom more directly.
Details 👉https://t.co/YcTVLaQL16#edtech #MIEExpert #MicrosoftEDU pic.twitter.com/ZAH74w2gbh — Mike Tholfsen (@mtholfsen) June 27, 2020 In a tweet, Mike Tholfsen, Product Manager on the Microsoft EDU team, said the 300 limit is now available for educations users. The limit for Government users remains at 250 participants. It is worth noting this does not mean video participants, which is still capped to nine, but rather the amount of people who can be active in a meeting.
Competing with Zoom
Zoom also allows 300 meeting participants. Regarding video call members, Microsoft says Teams will come in line with Zoom’s 49 participants this fall. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom became the go-to video communication tool for enterprise and personal use. Indeed, the company saw its monthly userbase increase from 10 million to over 300 million. During the same time, Teams users have grown from around 20 million to over 75 million.
