Yankees vs. Red Sox. Coke vs. Pepsi. Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom.
Call it the clash of the web conferencing titans. Since the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the business world in March, organizations large and small worldwide have had to adapt to working remotely — or not working at all. To accomplish that, most have learned (in some cases, virtually overnight) to become conversant with using one of the two leading web conferencing platforms.
Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom was the subject of a Thursday morning webinar hosted by the Technology Council of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, “Making the Best of the Home Office.”
Amy Bailey Pacelli is a business-development specialist with SphereGen, a New Haven-headquartered firm that builds custom apps and supports existing ones. Three-quarters of SphereGen’s 65-plus workforce is in India, so real-time online collaboration is the 12-year-old company’s life’s blood.
Pacelli noted that the cohort of Teams users has grown exponentially virtually overnight — from 20 million to 44 million in just three months since the COVID pandemic exploded. Today more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies use the platform, and worldwide some 150 organizations have 10,000 or more users. It also supports 44 languages so far — ideal for SphereGen’s global workforce.
“We’ve had calls of up to 50 people globally with virtually no audio drops,” Pacelli explained. “Our clients really love this.”
On the not-so-hot side, Teams doesn’t function well with older computers and non-smart phones. Its user interface requires training (unlike Zoom), and until this week could display only four users onscreen at a time (as of May 20, it’s nine, Pacelli said).
The main difference between the two platforms is Microsoft’s integration between Teams and its Office 365 stack. Mac users are more likely to be found on Zoom.
The Zoom case was made during the webinar by Glen McDermott, CEO of the New Haven-based Red Rock Branding, and a member of the Chamber’s board of directors and Tech Council.
A platform relatively few non-techies were familiar with scarcely three months ago, Zoom Communications has virtually exploded to a market capitalization approaching $50 billion — a sum greater, McDermott pointed out, than that of the world’s seven largest airlines combined.
Unlike Teams, the Zoom suite works perfectly with Macs and is mobile friendly. Its ease of use is a major selling point, and now-familiar features such as Chat, Q&A, polling and breakout rooms make Zoom highly engaging.
Also engaging is the fact that recordings, chat and transcripts are easily downloadable in Zoom.
Not so great? Well, there’s the security thing — Zoombombing, by which tech terrorists invade Zoom conferences with pornographic images and similar offensive interruptions.
McDermott said some of the Zoom security problems come from conference organizers publishing meeting links publicly. He suggested making Zoom conferences registration-required and always requiring use of passcodes to log on..
Lastly, the webinar touched on the thorny issue of web conferencing tips and etiquette.
Pacelli said that when planning conferences, team members should decide in advance “who is talking about which points” — a division of responsibility that, in a face-to-face setting, would easily be cued by eye contact. Also, she recommended, use people’s names to ask a direct question. “Otherwise you have nobody unmuted and nobody talks — or everyone unmuted and everybody talks,” she said.
