The coronavirus crisis and the confinement that the governments of several countries have established to prevent the spread of the virus among the population has led many people to continue carrying out their professional activities from their homes. Thus, telepresence and telework tools have become more important than ever.
In this area, Microsoft has Teams , a collaborative and instant messaging program aimed at the business world. It is a product also used by large corporations. A score of Teams customers, in fact, would have more than 100,000 employees who would actively use the program. Among them is Accenture, with more than 440,000 workers connecting and collaborating with the Microsoft service.
Redmond’s software is Slack’s main competitor, created by a startup that has become wildly popular in recent years.
All the boom in telecommuting derived from the difficult situation has caused Microsoft Teams to have received a large number of new users. In just one week the tool would have increased its number of active daily users by about 12 million. On March 11, it had 32 million active users per day, but on March 18, the number rose to 44 million.
In full increase of use on March 16, Microsoft Teams crashed and suffered several connection problems in some places and Europe. The company created by Bill Gates surely had not foreseen that it was going to have a mass adoption because of the coronavirus.
However, taking into account that the data is from last week and that in these five days other countries have also adopted confinement and telework measures, it is very possible that the amount is already much higher.
Focusing on the voice
In all this framework, Microsoft is trying to improve its software to favor work from home. Thus, it has created a new technology that – through artificial intelligence – is capable of identifying the voice of users and filtering any other sound . In this way, the background noise of a busy street, a rambunctious pet, the TV, the neighbor’s music, etc. could be eliminated. The tech company reportedly referred to it as ‘real-time noise suppression’. However, although at this time this functionality would be more than necessary, it seems that it will not be launched until the end of the year.
Another function that Microsoft would have announced for Teams – and that makes perfect sense during these days of confinement that we are experiencing – is the possibility of focusing only on the subject in a video call and blurring the background to avoid distractions and that your interlocutors only see what essential in your communications. Live subtitles have also been added.
Microsoft Teams has recently incorporated video chats of up to 50 people and the removal of background noise in pre-recorded videos.
The growth of the software would have been quite large in recent months. In November, Microsoft reported that Teams had reached 20 million users.
