Microsoft seems to be putting the kibosh on broad third-party, non-supported interoperability with Teams, making partners and end users jump through a lot of hoops to get the devices (or software loads for SRS solutions) to work with Teams. However, another way to look at this, and the way Microsoft views it, is that Teams is a new, highly functional, dynamic collaboration environment to which it will continuously add capabilities. Enabling these new capabilities will require some changes on the cloud service side, as well as some on the software client side. Thus, Microsoft needs to be able to update the Teams service and the Teams clients simultaneously to provide end users with the very best communications experience; anything less gives users a non-optimal experience and ultimately reverts to a least common denominator set of capabilities. We need only look at the BlueJeans, Pexip, and Polycom VTC integrations to see this: The users on the non-Teams video units only receive a small subset of the Teams capabilities.
Controlling the user experience seems to be a common yet growing thread in the industry. With Webex Teams, for example, Cisco is also attempting to optimize the experience by controlling the user interface. And, like Microsoft, Cisco supports a WebRTC version of its Webex Teams client, and it can support VTC units.
Likewise, Zoom is expanding its video conferencing solution. In addition to supporting third-party VTC devices, Zoom now has its own Zoom Room for group video conferencing, the Zoom desktop client (not WebRTC-based, however), and mobile device clients.
Where do I stand on all of this?
I use video... a lot. My primary go-to is desktop video, but I do have a SIP-based personal video unit on my desk that supports 1080p video, and I run Skype for Business (via Office 365) on the desktop. But, now I also run Webex Teams when communicating with people from Cisco and Microsoft Teams when communicating with people from Microsoft.
Personally, I detest downloading new video clients, and I've been known to tell vendors that if their system doesn't support Skype for Business or WebRTC, I won't join the meeting unless I do so by telephone audio, simply because I don't want to clutter my computer with a ton of different video clients.
Nevertheless, it appears the approach in our industry -- and certainly that of the major vendors -- is to provide a full solution with an enhanced user experience and advanced capabilities. However, to get this you need to use that vendor's client, whether it be the desktop software, room video units, or even third-party peripherals (like phones) running that vendor's software.
I had hoped that WebRTC would perhaps overcome some of this need for specific clients, and that we would just use the browser as the primary interface. In such a scenario, the common user interface device is the browser serving up the communications experience of whatever service the browser happens to be pointed at. Clearly WebRTC has some limitations, yet Cisco recently said that its new Webex WebRTC client can give the end user a fully functional collaboration user experience.
Each vendor needs to differentiate its offering, and clearly part of that differentiation is in the functionality it offers. To obtain the very best user experience and to provide access to the underlying capabilities does require control of both the client and the cloud service. This is clearly where Microsoft is headed with Teams and Teams device interoperability, and like it or not, we're all going to be headed in this direction with all of our collaboration vendors. Like I tell my clients: There has never been a better time than now to consider consolidating your communications and workspace/UC platforms into a single vendor solution.
