Meta, the company which was formerly known as Facebook, announced on Wednesday 10th November a new partnership with Microsoft, allowing customers to integrate Meta’s Workplace social network software with Microsoft Teams.
Meta’s Workplace is a communication tool that helps to connect workers within a company, whether they work remotely or on-site. It uses features like group, live video broadcast, and live chat to connect workers to one another across the entire organization. Teams is however focused on communication between workers and their direct colleagues, i.e. those with which they directly work, on a project or smaller-scale task.
This integration gives customers access to Workplace content inside the Teams app, and also gives users access to view Teams video meetings inside the Workplace app. It is a direct partnership that brings both platforms closer, albeit not necessarily into one singular app.
This partnership brings two rivals in the communication software market together, to make either party stronger. As mentioned above, both platforms are similar but do not have a full overlap as they both focus on different types of organizational communication.
Meta’s Workplace head, Ujjwal Singh told CNBC that the integration had been requested by customers (who must have seen the potential of such a partnership) like Accenture and Vodafone. Singh went ahead to explain that customers will use the complementary features of both platforms, instead of using competing features. Singh stated that the partnership was mainly for customers that make use of both platforms.
CNBC reports that Meta stands to gain the most from the partnership, as its Workplace service drags far behind competitors when speaking about users. Workplace announced in May that it had reached 7 million paid subscribers, while in stark contrast, Microsoft announced in July that Teams had 250 million monthly active users. The staggering difference in numbers proves that Meta’s Workplace stands to gain the most from partnering with a widely-used platform like Teams, with the hope that the platform will attract even more customers.
This would not be Workplace’s first partnership with Microsoft, as it has previously integrated with software like Office 365 and OneDrive. However, it has no integration with Yammer, which is Microsoft’s social network software that even competes with Meta more directly than any other software. In comparison to Workplace, Yammer has tens of millions of users per month with the number of users doubling year after year.
This would give Microsoft Teams the opportunity to maintain the partnership with Workplace using slightly different software, while also directly competing with Workplace using very similar software.
Ujjwal Singh touted that both products were great, strong products coming together to provide an even better experience for the user.
