Chris Goosen: Welcome to the cloud architects podcast, a
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Chris Goosen: Hello and welcome to another episode of the cloud
architects podcast. Today we are in New Zealand of all places.
And I must say the weather out here is significantly better
than the weather in Sydney where I've just come from. So I took
the time took the opportunity here to sit down and we're going
to we're going to record and talk a little bit about teams.
We don't have on a nick today. I think Nick is in Singapore
somewhere. Not sure what Warren's doing. But for those of
you who love Warren's energy, never fear. We have a guest who
runs at that level right here. So I think we're gonna we're
gonna make up for it today. So excited to be sitting down with
Paul and Andrew here to talk about teams. Guys, you want to
do a quick introduction poll starting with you.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Paul Bloem. I have
been a MVP for the last, what is going for six years now?
Hopefully, seven soon. I look after a team that has got sort
of collaboration, teams, Skype for Business, all the pretty
stuff that gets connected to that, but more importantly,
these days. I'm focused on adoption on governance,
compliance and that sort of thing.
Chris Goosen: Very nice.
Andrew Morpeth: All right. My name is Andrew. I'm also an MVP
been one also for about six years I do believe. So I'm, I'm
an ex Skype for Business guy, I suppose we'll still a little bit
of Skype for Business came from the office communication server
day. So very much engrossed in the enterprise voice stuff,
transitioning at the moment into the Microsoft team's world with
enterprise voice glasses on at the moment, but sort of working
on all the other stuff that teams brings to the table.
Chris Goosen: And it brings a lot to the table. Right? I mean,
I think there's been, it's been the constant theme for for a
couple of years, at least now, there's been a lot of talk about
teams and teams and teams that and, you know, obviously, we
just come from ignite a couple three months ago now, can you
believe it three months. And there was a lot of announcements
that ignite and I mean, have you guys seen anything new since
ignite that that kind of sticks out to you?
Paul Bloem: Yeah, my favorite. new functionality is really the
SharePoint view that you get when you're looking at your
folder structure within teams, being able to look at the date
and timestamps and being able to change the views and create
perhaps even my own view I really liked it. It's Yeah,
Andrew Morpeth: it adds a bit of complication, but I like it as
well. I like that familiar view that you get from SharePoint and
there, but more buttons to get used to, I suppose for some
users, but I think it's a welcome addition.
Chris Goosen: Okay. Well, very nice. Yeah. I mean, there's I
think just recently I saw the there was the read receipts have
kind of made its way as well which is which is kind of fun
because especially when you're in a in a situation where you
know, islands mode, you don't always have to do it's gonna be
Andrew Morpeth: it could be seen as Big Brother ish. It is
configurable by policy but again, I like it it's good to
know when someone send your message. And of course, the
expectation should be sit that the chat is an instant message,
right? It's not It's not the expectation is not instant
anymore as it wasn't skype. And sort of training that out of
people is a hard thing because we still get those messages of
you know, hi, and then they wait for a response. Hi, back. And
don't just get to the point and check I'm not used to that
persistent nature that teams brings that skype never had.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I think, you know,
read receipts or in any form of communication is always an
interesting one, right? Because like me personally, on my phone
on iMessage, I don't have receipts turned on. Yeah. So you
know, you'll guess if I've read it or not, but then when I use
WhatsApp, because I use WhatsApp a lot as well. I like, you know,
the fact the fact that folks can see that I've, you know, read it
or not. And it helps me when I can, you know, and I guess maybe
it's just the different types of people that communicate on
iMessage versus on WhatsApp. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Andrew Morpeth: right. It depends what you're trying to
avoid, as far as messages, most of your contact address list.
And
Paul Bloem: when I'm speaking to users, I'm always talking about
having some form of a social contract. And that is just the
nature in which we behave together. Yeah. So if we know
hey, if you've read a message then and if I want a response,
because that's a social contract, then please do
respond. Or whether we're sharing files or whatever it is
we're doing, there's sort of a social agreement. As to how
we'll be operating in their team, and I think that's
essential. Otherwise you do get that. Hey, are you just ignoring
me? And what's going on?
Chris Goosen: Yep, yep. And it's hard because sometimes you need
to gather your thoughts on something, right? And I like to
me, I guess etiquette would dictate that, like, Hey, give me
a second or Hey, I'm looking into that for you. I'll get back
to you in a second, right? Just to give someone a response so
that they know you have acknowledged the message. I find
that that's something that doesn't exist all that often in
business anymore, right? There's this I need this from you. Give
it to me
Andrew Morpeth: situation. And now now thing everyone wants
everything now these days. Yes, what we're conditioned for, I
suppose. But, yeah, again, that comes back to that social
contract. Right. And that's why the adoption piece is so
important. And unfortunately, it does get lifted out quite a bit.
And I think that's probably especially true maybe in our
region, because we're a little bit she'll be right. You know,
the users will figure it out. Let's spin the budget on
Technology, you know, the message I've got is that we can
just turn it all on in the cloud, we don't have service to
deploy as fireless services cost in that regard. So that should
be transition to watering and feeding your users and keeping
them up to speed and making sure they understand the tick,
because it's changing so quickly, that it's really hard
for anyone to keep up with even even myself, right. I mean, I
can I struggle to keep up and I'm dealing with a single
product.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. And
unfortunately, organizations are looking at the technology and
going, we can deploy this at a much cheaper cost. Let's save
their budget. Yeah. But the real challenge is that traditionally,
folks haven't measured success in the way you would think they
would. They'd measure success based on does the technology
work? Check. It works. Does it do what it said on the label?
Yes, yes. But what they never measure is are people using it?
Are they circumventing it? Yeah. Is it actually being adopted and
used? Are you actually getting value for money for your
investment? Yep. Or is it just a white elephant you've just paid
for an off the wall. You've saved. So we've, you know,
Chris Goosen: we've had some great conversations on this show
about adoption and the difference between adoption and
consumption, right? And why it's really important to measure the
value that comes out of adopting something as opposed to, well,
you know, we have someone log into it once every six months,
and so therefore, the license is justified. So that's, I mean,
it's interesting, and I think it's a very, it can be a very
deep topic of conversation just by itself. But what are you guys
seeing as far as team's adoption, right? Because if you
listen to Microsoft and the Microsoft message, right,
obviously, there's a lot of investment going on in teams,
the team's product group are doing a lot to promote and
market the product. Are you seeing people adopting?
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, most of the
customers I think we touch have already deployed teams to some
capacity. So you know, Microsoft wants seats turned on and that's
what they're pushing, right. But the most of the customers were
saying they've already turned the stuff on. They just need
help to do bits. They don't quite understand it in
enterprise voice is a key one, because it is still reasonably
technical. So that element we get pulled into a lot, I guess
the SharePoint aspect of it and the document management stuff is
a complex problem a lot of organizations have, they might
have things in Dropbox and various other storage solutions
or partially or, you know, not properly deployed SharePoint, I
need help in that regard. Those would be the two key things do
you think?
Paul Bloem: Well? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We're
seeing a lot of organizer because we've got quite a long,
rich history in the Skype for business world. What we're
seeing is a lot of organizations, existing
customers, and some new who are going we're on Skype for
Business want to go to teams. And the challenge I'm seeing is
I'm going to them and I'm going well, if you want to go apples
for apples, because that's what they say to me. Can you show us
compete and so you can't because Skype is an apple, but teams is
a fruit salad. Yes, there's some apple in there. Yeah, but
there's a hell of a lot of other stuff in there, you know. And so
it's often my point of reference, just trying to bring
them on board and show them the teams is actually a portal
through which you access many other things including a slice
of Apple
Chris Goosen: Yep, fair enough. That's very well said. I think
we might use that future.
Andrew Morpeth: I'm gonna adopt that too. I've heard it many
times but haven't adopted into my own vocab yet.
Chris Goosen: Do you think there's a difference to or in
the way? adoption is happening in like here in New Zealand or
in the APAC region, for example versus North American, the rest
of the world?
Paul Bloem: It's a it's a good question. We don't have the
visibility we have what's happening elsewhere is through
our, you know, our connection through the MVP program and that
sort of thing. What what I'm seeing and I'm sure Andrew,
you're probably on the same page. A lot of organizations is
kind of two, two parts to it. There are those who are really
keen to jump in and get it done and who are happy to see the
limitations or see the challenges and find ways around
them. Because you've highlighted them upfront and then there are
others who go I'll just sit back and hold until you tell me it's
all good. And that's kind of the two views when they're coming
from sort of a Skype well then they are including Andrew
specialty enterprise voice
Andrew Morpeth: If I was to take a guess I think it comes down to
size of organization as to whether and how much time that
they'll spend on adoption. And in the New Zealand region, I
guess the the typical business size is probably under 100
seats, right, we get the odd, you know, hundred 500 seats,
thousand, you know, four or 5000s getting pretty big, you
know, biggest company in this entire country is about 35,000
seats run. So I think it probably comes down to that. So
my expectation would be sort of North America excetera a lot, a
lot more bigger companies, they would probably spend a lot more
money on that stuff. They got a lot more people to address. How
did it get the information across versus say, 100 seat
organization, it's a lot easier for the IT department to just do
that they kind of personally know the users.
Paul Bloem: You know, it's a bit easier. Yeah. What we're having
to come up with ways to introduce adoption concepts and
principles in bite sized chunks getting back to my food analogy,
because no one's got the funding divvied up the whole bowl,
right? Yep. So we've got to give them a little spoon feed chunks
as they need to I think
Chris Goosen: that's absolutely fascinating. I mean, I had not
considered that that the market size is, you know, the average
company size is going to be smaller. And so the way that you
when you're in a smaller business, there is more of a
familiarity of you know, people know each other people know the
IT people. And so I think you do deal with training and adoption
slightly differently to, you know, when your hundred thousand
seat company and the IT guy doesn't know, you're just a
name, or an email address to them, right. They don't know
each other. No one knows each other.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, absolutely. And then, of course, when you're
looking at the adoption, sort of the, the portfolio of skills you
need, you know, there's all these different roles that when
you look at the Microsoft framework, there's all these
different people you've got in there. You come down to New
Zealand, and what do you find? Well, your admin are all things
to all people within that space. Yeah. And so you know, it is
what it is, and you just got to go with it.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, fair enough. And so, with that, I mean, I
guess if we look at the types of companies around here are you
seeing One of the things we've seen a lot of over the last six
or seven months, maybe nine months is tenant to tenant type
migrations, m&a type situations, right? And we had for a long
time we, that process was pretty well understood and was pretty
well, we had it down. We knew, with the workloads that most
companies adopted, we could do those types of projects pretty
easily with some tool sets and things like that. But with teams
in the mix, and because of people adopting teams, it's
inevitable that every tenant now has some form of team stuff.
Right. And, you know, just recently, I was working with a
customer where they, you know, they had kind of sold off a part
of their business divested a part of their business, and they
had two and a half thousand teams. And and the new business
was only taking like 500 of those two and a half thousand
teams. And it became I mean, it was, it was very interesting.
Yeah, yeah, I got to know the graph API. That's an I I
probably would have ever wanted to drop it. That project. But I
mean, it was fun, though, but it is very complex.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, that the tools for that sort of tenant tenant
migrations there. Yeah, I guess I mean, they hardly existing.
Right. They're they're pretty, pretty juvenile at best. And so
a lot of that comes down to the skill sets of the resources
using,
Andrew Morpeth: and that can be a creative challenge. And
Chris Goosen: it definitely, you know, I think that the point
there, or at least to me, is it's arguable whether the
investment in because let's be honest, you can do anything. If
you put your mind to it. We have PowerShell we have automation
things at the end, we can eventually we can get there,
right? Oh, you want to migrate conversation history? Well,
there's no real API for that, but we could probably get it
done. I know Lee Ford. MVP out of the UK has a fantastic script
and does some stuff. And you know, I used his stuff a lot in
the past or at least on that project. I owe you a beer there
Lee we'll see each other at summit. I'm buying the first
round.
Andrew Morpeth: About a second Yeah.
Chris Goosen: But you've got to get to a point at some point
where you go, well, the resource costs associated with coming up
with these include g bomb Grant Solutions isn't worth the reward
of Yeah, getting the stuff. Absolutely.
Paul Bloem: You've got to, and we had a discussion about that
earlier today. Sometimes you've got the sort of idea of
perfection on a plan of where you got to go. And then there's
the budget. Yep. So you got to kind of draw a line in the sand
and go, look, we can give you that perfect outcome that you
want, but it's gonna cost you a hell of a lot of money. So what
are you comfortable with paying? Yeah, how much can we deliver
for that? And you've got to set that expectation right from the
beginning. And it gives you a bit of leeway to deliver
accordingly.
Chris Goosen: Yeah. And I think that's, that's the important
part. That's our job as technologists, right, is to be
upfront with our customers and actually advise them to that,
right. I think Unfortunately, there's this sort of sense
lately of people just becoming button clickers, right, instead
of actually being advisors or consultants to to the customers
because you know, it's so much cheaper to do it. Project 100%
remote that it is yeah, to go and stand there talking to your
customer. But when you're actually spending the time with
them, you can actually then have types these types of
conversations and actually deliver significant more value
than just Next. Next Next thing through that
Andrew Morpeth: person is so important. Yeah, video
conferencing to a degree. Yeah. You need to get to know people
and have candid conversations. And yeah, at least initially,
you need to have those in person, I still think there's
still merit in that.
Paul Bloem: We're still old school that way within our team.
Any project that we kick off, we always insist on you know,
initially at very least getting them eye to eye contact. Our
body language, customer's body language, you basically install
confidence, and you help them to appreciate that, hey, these guys
know what they're doing and they're here to help me. And of
course between Andrew and I were always waiting for that first
project in Fiji but it hasn't happened
Andrew Morpeth: yet, or any other island nation.
Chris Goosen: So tell me about and I think you might be the
best Andrew might be the most positive sort of work. So the
islands mode trap is something that I've, we've seen a lot of
Andrew Morpeth: Yep. Yeah, I've heard that term I coined I
haven't quite used it myself, but it's certainly a problem.
You know, Microsoft obviously want adoption of teams. And for
them islands makes sense because it means by default, generally
speaking, if you're a three, five, you know, one of those
plans you get, it's going to just be turned on unless the
admins have done something to circumvent that, right. You just
get it. So if someone starts using it, since an IM chat, I
should call up to someone or some sort of message, it will
get to the other participant and they can kind of join and it's
there. The problem I find with it is it causes interrupt issues
because in Ireland's as the name suggests, both Skype for
Business if you're using that as very separate teams and they run
independently of each other. And with Ireland's being the
default. You really need your customers to understand that
they need to drive adoption away from Skype entities. teams and
make sure everyone's aware of it. Because things that can
happen. For example, as I seen Paul a chat message, right? He
doesn't know what teams is he's never used it because his
company hasn't announced that it exists. It's just turned on. And
he's found it. I found it. And I've sent him a chat message.
Yes, he'll get an email notification, say someone's
trying to get you in teams. But he's never heard of his Oh, was
this team's thing throws it in this junk email, right. So
creates a poor experience for the users that who are using it.
And the ones because of the ones that aren't interested in kind
of self learning it. So that's where the problem is. So what
you really want in my view, is you want to make a call up
front, you want to decide what platform you're going to use,
and sit that mode accordingly. For one by doing that, it
ensures that the interrupt works. We get a lot of customers
saying it doesn't work. And it's not that it doesn't work. It's
that probably you're in islands mode, or probably you don't
quite understand what the modes actually mean. So in the very
basic sense of it, there's a Skype only mode which centrally,
your teams is disabled, and you only use Skype. And then at the
other end of the scale, there's a team's only mode where you
don't use Skype anymore. And you you fully transition to teams.
There's modes in the middle that let you transition features
across, for example, there's a Skype with teams meeting mode,
right. And those modes essentially will allow you to
present to the user what they should be using and what client
and if you have half your user base on Skype, and half on
teams, it guarantees the interrupt based on the modes
that each of your users are on. So if I'm in Skype, and I send a
chat message to someone who is in teams, I don't need to know
that they're in teams. By setting those policies correctly
for each user. Microsoft will make sure that that happens,
right. And and largely this works. This works well. And it
works for even for Skype hybrid server deployments. So yes, I
think it probably is a trap. That's probably not the best
default. I understand why Microsoft have done it. But
it's, you know, it's up to you IT admins out there, too. Get
across it and make sure you deploy the mode that suits you
and understand what it means.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, I think so. But really bottom line here is
it can be really confusing to the end user when when email
messages flying around. And yeah, you know, and I saw this,
you know, internally, we we weren't on as much for a long
time. And, you know, I was on teams only because I was one of
the tests guinea pigs, right. But then like, my manager, for
example, would not be and so I'm trying to, I am aiming from
teams, two teams, but you know, his presence is away because
he's not even looking at the team's client. He's using Skype
for everything. So I ended up having two contacts for him one
that has the Skype icon next to it. One that doesn't it. Like
for me, that's confusing. Can you imagine for like an end user
who has no idea what's going on here? It's
Paul Bloem: a shame because the technology we're talking about
is designed to connect people. Yes. Forget it. We're in a
situation where we're disconnecting. Yes, yeah.
Chris Goosen: Yeah. So I think really important to spend the
time here thinking about not only like, how will you want
What the best user experience is going to be for your situation.
But also, make sure the timeline is understood because it can be
very easy trap to fall into forgive the pun, to, okay, we're
going to enable this, it's going to coexist. So we don't need to
worry about accelerating the deployment, because, hey, it's
going to work right. You know, it's kind of like a, like a
hybrid deployment. You know, there are a lot of folks in the
exchange water use hybrid as a long term coexistence mode,
right, which is, which is fine and in, it certainly works for
that. But you don't want to be doing that with this. You kind
of want to use it to make sure that you're transitioning
correctly, but get the transaction done as quickly as
you can. Yeah,
Paul Bloem: it's got to be a driver.
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Once customers
understand what it means it's actually a reasonably easy
decision to take to the business and say, Look, we need to make
this decision, what's it going to be? And then what I mean, the
easiest thing to do and if people had people have done that
out the out front, right, or if Microsoft had made Skype only
the default because everyone was on Skype or You know, something
like that. And then he forced the admins to make the decision,
it probably would have created a bitter experience, because
people would have had to go and turn things on and really
understand what it meant. And I personally don't like the
default. But
Paul Bloem: yeah, I'll back you up on that. I totally agree. I
don't like the idea of having dual apps with overlapping
features. It confuses people. But as soon as you change those
modes to something else, you're taking something away and if you
ever want to annoy users take something away so it leaves you
in a in a nasty place which I guess is a good thing for us
since it's how we make our bread
Andrew Morpeth: well one thing I find amusing is that that is
completely the opposite in the personal world, like people run
around with WhatsApp iMessage everything on their phones they
got no problem switching between them for you know different
chats but when it comes to enterprise Yep, it kind of has
to be run by the business that you work for otherwise they
disinterested in it for what are
Chris Goosen: we also we're at a point now where things are so
like the always on on by default is Such a thing now, right? Like
if you I think the the team's app is now being deployed with,
with Office. Yeah. So to kind of get away from it, and you know,
I, my wife, I often use my wife's company organization as a
great kind of example of a lot of things because they, you
know, they use the whole gamut of technologies. They use
Google, they use WebEx stuff. And I know the other day, I was
looking at a laptop for something, I was helping you out
with something. And I was like, Hey, you have teams, and she was
like, oh, let's just got installed the other day. I don't
know what that's for. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of just,
uh, you know, you, you just, I mean, it's a great example of
actually being able to, you know, communicate to your users
when changes coming. But also, there's so much overlap between
so many different things and different vendors are doing same
things. And you know, why on earth the WebEx folks called
their product teams as well. It's just beyond me like it
just,
Andrew Morpeth: you know, mix it up some more.
Chris Goosen: But let's not scratch open that wound right
now. So, okay, so let's, let's talk a little bit about, I
guess, direct routing and the voice side of things.
Andrew Morpeth: Okay. So for those that don't know direct
routing is essentially a bring your own SIP trunk to Microsoft
Teams. It's a it's an over the internet encrypt encrypted SIP
trunk between your session border controller or SBC to the
Microsoft Teams edge. There's various ways you can deploy it.
So you can use a supported or certified SBC. So there's the
likes of ribbon audiocodes. And there's a few other ones Oracle
and I'm trying to rattle them off off the top of my head hear
this, but the other way you can do that is it's opened the doors
for telcos to start offering the service as well. So they're
building out their SBC platforms to support direct routing and
then offering SIP trunks directly to teams on your behalf
right at little to no more additional costs as what we're
seeing in the market here. So you know, it might be $1 $2 more
for a SIP trunk as opposed to Something delivered on premise
that you'd have to hook up to your own SBC. They take away the
headache. And that makes sense for a lot of customers who are
trying to get everything off Prem, move everything to cloud.
They've already got a telco relationship, that telco offers
the service. They just turn it on, migrate the numbers across,
and you're done. There's still some merit. I think in having an
SBC. I like it. When customers choose the SBC option selfishly
probably because it gives me a inbetween vantage point to see
where things are going wrong if they're going wrong. It also
lets me do things like manipulate numbers and and, you
know, do some diverting and different things like that
that's not quite there in the team's Admin Center at the
moment or available as a feature, right. So the SBC gives
you some additional capability that you wouldn't have if you go
for a run of the mill hosted solution. So those are the two
options we have in our market and there's obviously the
Microsoft calling plans, but they're only in sort of 11 1213
countries off the top of my head. Were you just buying the
minutes directly of Microsoft.
Chris Goosen: Yeah. How what would you say would be the
percentage of folks who organizations who already have
an SBC that that they just essentially using what they have
versus new purchases? Yeah,
Andrew Morpeth: a lot of our customers because we've been
just hitting the sand with Skype for Business for so long so many
years. You know, all the customers we deal with a pretty
well I'd say 95% of our Skype customers are enterprise voice
enabled which means they have SBCs a lot of those SBCs have
always been Microsoft Certified so therefore they can be
firmware upgraded to support the team's journey. So yeah, most of
our customers who have Scott definitely will have an SBC if
they don't, you know, you can buy one you can go for the
hosted service. These are all supported virtualized now. So
you know, you can get pick one up for a few hundred bucks. It's
a reasonably cheap entry point. Yeah. If you want to host it. We
have
Paul Bloem: we have a split with several organizations and
there's a number I'm working with at the moment who are
trying to be resilient geographically to, you know,
disasters and that sort of thing. But a lot of them have
components that don't traditionally work with sort of
a hosted or cloud based SBC so that they might have some
elevator phones, they might have some Nish contact center that
doesn't talk to teams. And so we'll use the session border
controller as a voice gateway or router, right, that allows you
to intercept and interoperate these different platforms. fair
to say those are massively more complex in terms of deployment,
and looking after and so on. And that I guess it's fair to say
that's our Kung Fu, we may get some good margin of that. We
know that space very well. And those who have gone down that
path have made their choice knowingly because of
constraints, functions, features, that sort of thing
that's not available in the Skype or even team's world.
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah, that's right. But the key the key
things we use SBCs for if we have access to them ourselves,
number one, and ELA and allocated numbers. There's no
reason way to handle that in teams right now. So in the SBC,
I can I can see that teams doesn't know what that number
is. And then I can basically do a reroute and maybe rewrite that
as the reception queue or something like that and send the
number elsewhere. It's probably one of the key things that we
use it for. And also just general number manipulations,
which, as far as I can tell, I've seen, I've seen some stuff
surface in the PowerShell. Properties, but I don't believe
they're accessible to be seen just yet. But there are some
translation capabilities that I think are going to be surfaced
in teams soon. So that will negate some of us. But that's
probably the key thing that we enjoy having an SBC for, on top
of bit, the trace, the traceability being able to see
what what is Microsoft saying, what are the telco say? Yep. And
where should I focus my efforts to find the problem versus don't
have an SBC I need to look in the Microsoft portal, try and
gather as much information I can from the logging, which is not
as detailed as traces and go from there. And then Maybe I've
got to engage the telco because its their problem so, it takes a
little bit longer yes on an SBC trace, we can figure out exactly
what's going on straightaway. Yeah,
Chris Goosen: I can see how that would be beneficial and how
potentially having some third party doing the sort of cloud
SBC situation would would cause a situation of people pointing
fingers at each other, right? Yeah. But then but then you also
have a few you know, if you really want to keep it very
simple and you potentially a smaller organization, you could
just buy the minutes if you're in a supportive market, you
could just buy the minutes from Microsoft and distribute it all.
Then you have the one throat to choke as they say, Well, yeah,
it's all Microsoft Microsoft thing that exact Okay,
Andrew Morpeth: so there's plenty options. It just comes
down to your your preference, okay, we just normally talk it
through with the customer. totally up to them. We don't we
don't push any particular way of doing it down their throat. It's
Yeah, we
Paul Bloem: don't we don't have a preferred service or anything
like it will be. We basically go pros and cons. What's the
customer's current relationships with with whoever they're
dealing with, and then we try and work with them to find some
short yet
Chris Goosen: And how about I mean, are you seeing a lot of
customers replacing their traditional PBX systems with
with teams? And do you think teams is ready for that? Is it
really?
Andrew Morpeth: It's a hard one to answer. It's not quite there.
Really. It's at the tipping point, I think so where it will
suit a customer as well. You've got simple requirements. Okay.
So we're we're mostly seeing people take the plunge to
enterprise voice and teams, is professional services type
industries, because they don't have super complex requirements.
This generally people like us, lawyers, accountants, those
sorts of people who are making and receiving calls directly to
them. And they might have a receptionist or to receptionist
or something like that simple call flow coming in, distributes
calls, that that works pretty well. But there's still
limitations even in that right. The call queues are getting
pretty good. Some of the features of the call queues
getting better than Skype, some aren't quite as mature. The
biggest ones that we come up against that a well worth noting
is, by default from a queue, you can't fold out to a PSTN number,
you know, it's quite a common requirement, maybe an uncle tick
or something you need to go directly out. So, workaround,
you need a dummy user account that's fully licensed, you know,
so you kind of have to create your own creative ways of doing
things. Another one that we that impacts us, I think it's more of
an APAC issue. Not a global issue from other people I've
talked to is that there's significant call queue delay. So
when you answer a call queue call, you can I've seen up to
eight seconds before you get audio right. Wow, that's a
pretty disjointed experience for the agent trying to answer calls
right, where they're going to sit there and wait for the the
audio to kick in. So that's problematic. And we've we've had
to for some customers who don't think that's acceptable, and I
don't think that's acceptable personally, some customers live
with it. But for customers that don't want to live with it,
we've had to use again, dummy user accounts using the core
group capability of a user endpoint tops it out, right? So
we create a core group in the user config and distribute calls
that way. Again, another creative way of doing things to
work around some immaturities in the product. So, you know, if,
if you're going to move enterprise voice to teams, my
general messages, you've got to be willing to deal with some
rough edges. I wouldn't call it bleeding edge anymore, but it's
kind of just come out of the bleeding edge. And it's for the
early majority, certainly who are willing and able and
prepared to be kind of flexible and you know, working around how
they might have expected it to work versus the realities of it.
So you really need to make sure you understand how enterprise
voice works and compare feature for feature for you know, what
you've got and what you've come from and determine what you're
prepared to give up them to get to teams at this enterprise
voice for at this early stage. Yeah, but enterprise voice is
not what Microsoft's really pushing as a it's really the
collaboration So that stuff's gonna mature, they're moving it
from the Skype online world it's getting there. It's, it's, I've
always said probably by the end of this year, we'll probably be
at the point where Man, these features are actually probably
better than Skype. Now a lot of them are already kind of better.
I like the auto attendance better the text to speech,
there's a lot of stuff that's better is just some stuff that's
just not quite there
Paul Bloem: It needs a bit of time to mature. So a lot of
businesses are not quite ready to take the plant. They want to
see it prove itself and you who can blame them? Yeah. But for
me, the real shining star in the team space when you're coming
from a Skype for business background is the meeting space.
I absolutely love the meeting space. It's one of my favorite
things to talk about it being able to see and there's some
really cool things coming that just can't wait to get my hands
on and just having a look at Skype versus a team's meeting.
It kind of feels a little 80s. Yeah.
Andrew Morpeth: I mean, yeah, hasn't changed much past what it
was a messenger you know, it's all that same sort of format, it
looks nice bit nicer. But it's sort of that messenger. It's
very old school instant message. And I say, teams is definitely
the new thing and the way forward and just jumping back to
modes, right? This is where you can use Mosier advantage if
you're a Skype customer and you're an enterprise voice in
teams isn't ready for you've checked it out, you can still
enable your users as Skype for Business with teams
collaboration and meetings. So that lights up meetings and
teams and you've got the collaboration stuff, which Skype
arguably doesn't work that either doesn't do and meetings,
probably not as good. You can light that up in teams, but
still ensure that the enterprise voice features are still in
teams. And so sorry. Yeah, yeah.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, that's actually a good point. Um, I you
know, I think we're seeing rapid development on this though,
right? It's not like Microsoft were promising or making
promises a year ago that they still making today
Andrew Morpeth: or we're still delivering stuff. Yeah. Which
which, but Skype didn't really change too much over the last. I
mean between 2013 and 20. 15 versions? I mean, yeah, there
were a few sort of small additions, but it hasn't
fundamentally changed for quite a long time. Whereas teams is
new and exciting. And it's certainly the way forward and
and it's, I think meeting the needs of the modern kind of
information work a much better than Skype does or ever will.
Because, you know, Skype's, I guess, at the start of at sunset
and a lot of ways, right, it's still a valid product, we still
recommend it where it makes sense. And the great thing about
choosing Scott is that you have a way to get to teams, it's you
can have, you can still deploy Skype and have some users on
teams, you can have some of your users using teams made, you
know, you've got the best of both worlds if you go that way.
And yeah, still completely valid solution, completely valid
solution, but it is it's kind of where the PBX was 15 years ago
when Skype and these UC platform started coming out. PB x's are
still around, but they're sort of kind of the almost did now.
Right. Scott's gonna be around for 510 years, I'd say, you
know, before it disappears.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. It's been
incredible. I come from a PBX background, he used to work for
Siemens, and the the mentality there was delivering services in
a way that they could address what they perceive as problems,
like, you know, pick up groups and hunt groups and all this
sort of thing. And I always say that, you know, with Skype, and
also with teams, the notion is different. I always argue with,
you know, when I'm doing training sessions with users
always tell them that when, when I'm trying to reach you, who
knows best how to get hold of you, me, or you, will you do you
know, whether you're on the run or whether you're at home or
whether you're in a hotel, so I shouldn't change my behavior of
reaching you, you control how that's delivered. And that's
fundamentally how it's changed the way people communicate. It's
been brilliant. But the scary bit is it's developing so fast,
and that's scary, but it's also very exciting. And very often,
and we might have to take a time check right now because this
might be invalid by the time I get to the end of the sentence,
current state of features is evolving so fast that sometimes
I'm busy showing somebody something and then I find that
it's changed.
Chris Goosen: Well, we will run into that problem every now and
then right away. The best is when you're in the Admin Center
trying to do a demo of something that the customer has asked,
then you can't find where it is. You're like, I saw this was here
just yesterday. And they're like, yeah, sure, it was. Yeah.
And this is because the UI moves something just a little bit
around. So that's it. I mean, it's it's a problem. Right. But
I guess it's part of the challenge we have is just going
to stay on top of that. And so I mean, we, we talked about, I
guess, teams being a fairly, you know, fruit salad versus just an
apple. Right. But, I mean, I guess one of the questions that
a lot of folks probably listening to this or watching
this have is how is their skillset relevant in the new
teams world, right, because I think, to me right now, there's
no such thing as a team's SME because teams is made up of so
many different pieces, hit the fruit salad That it depends on
your background and where you come from.
Paul Bloem: Absolutely. It's, it's at this early stage, there
are not a lot of people on the planet who have got a handle
across, even 80% of the underlying bits of technology.
And, and we're finding that you know, So traditionally coming
from a voice background and having lots of Skype for
Business, and now transitioning into the governance and
compliance areas and all the adoption stuff. When you look at
that whole spectrum, you do need different skill sets across so
you there is you're dead, right? There is no such thing as one
person who knows it all. And and we're finding that, you know,
we've got some SharePoint guys in the team, and I'm relying
heavily on them, and they're teaching me things all the time.
Yep. And just getting a feel for how they, you know, put things
in place around governance, compliance, and, you know,
around all that sort of control, but I'm learning lots, but what
I'm finding is there's a lot more consulting than actual
pushing nerd knobs and buttons.
Chris Goosen: Yes, yeah,
Andrew Morpeth: yeah, it's Very true. Yeah. I mean, I somewhat
missed the Skype days where you could be intimately familiar
with a single platform and just know everything about it.
Because now in this world, you cannot know everything about the
entire stack. And teams is just a window into multiple micro
services in teams, I'd say to sis admins, you've already got a
whole ton of skills already that you might not know you have.
Because teams is leveraging stuff you already know. It's
just a window into that that stuff, right? So yes, it is a
collaboration focused product and there's stuff to learn in
that regard. But a lot of the underlying technologies you
probably familiar with
Chris Goosen: it so my Sorry, it's almost like it the the
different areas or components of it also make for different
deployments. Right. So for example, when you have a voice
deployment, your voice requirements, I guess, fairly
binary in terms of customers are going to know they have these
phone numbers that need to be answered in this way or handled
in this way. But when it comes to the compliance and the
governance stuff. That stuff's gonna be so varied based on
industry and location. And very often, customers don't actually
have. They don't understand the requirements that they have
Andrew Morpeth: muted a lot of customers exactly in small I
couldn't afford to put that stuff in. But now they get it.
Yep. So they can deploy it, but they know nothing about it,
really.
Chris Goosen: And if they don't make the right, you know, it's
almost like making the right governance decisions up front.
You know, if we take our minds back to, you know, 8 10 years
ago, when the Yammer was, you know, first busting up on the
scene may even have been longer than that. I don't want to go
back that far. But, you know, I have battle scars from but but
it was one of those things where, like, if you didn't, in
the very beginning, put in some really solid governance. It
became such a mess. Yeah. And and then fixing it retroactively
afterwards was really hard. And teams is kind of like that, too.
I think like if you just enable it and just walk away. You're
going to come back in a week and it's going
Paul Bloem: to be absolutely so so take your Yammer problem.
Yeah. And I'll see your Yeah, Yammer problem with my
SharePoint issue. Yeah. 10 exactly, which was just to add
on, and she'll be right, what happened? Yep. And then we'll
throw in some Skype for Business and a few other bits and pieces.
And guess what? We have the most complicated combination of
things we've ever seen. Yeah. And so what could possibly go
wrong?
Chris Goosen: Yeah, exactly. And people, people almost like
because we talked about, and I said this already one time.
Today, we talk about change management and adoption a lot on
this on the show. And we talk about governance and compliance
and all of these things. And a lot of people think that these
are just buzzwords that we're throwing out and because they
sound cool, well, this this very good reason why these things
come up over and over and over again is because, you know, I'm
sure you guys also see customers who have not made the right
decisions up front or have kind of gone down the wrong path just
a little bit and then you come in and now you're, you're trying
to backtrack just a tad to to help them out. And so that's it,
you know, the message is consistent because these things
are really important.
Paul Bloem: Yeah, I tell stories to the highlight you So we keep
the innocent innocent by not naming any names. And I always
tell them a story. So depending on the the organization, and I
use some scary story, I heard a story last week from a customer
who said, We don't like to, you know, talking about shadow IT,
we don't like to force our users down any particular path. There
are creative bunch, and we don't want to limit that. And of
course, at the same time, they're they're an organization
who's creating new things. And if those things were to leak,
yeah, well, that'd be the end of them. Yep. So once I'm married
those two things together and said so. So I've got some some
pictures we took the other night, Andrew, I'll share them
with you. They're my Dropbox and I accidentally share the entire
Dropbox directory. I also have some very sensitive information
in there right now and knowing we have shared with you, and I
can't even tell
Chris Goosen: you access. Exactly.
Paul Bloem: Yeah. So there's all this kind of stuff. So I usually
just find an angle for the customer in question, and then
I'll tell them a story leading down a path. Yeah. And usually
at the end of it, they've got these massive eyeballs staring
at me and like I've just scare the hell out. Do it.
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah. And you don't have to necessarily go
bananas on it, but you've got to at least sit down and have the
conversations with the business and just go, you know, at least
make an informed decision. Yeah. And goes because fires you can
afford to or want to or you know, but at least have a bit of
a think about it before you just didn't roll on
Paul Bloem: know the risks. Right? Yeah.
Chris Goosen: Yep. I absolutely. I think that's a very, very good
advice. And it's the kind of, I guess, top off or come to a
close here, guys, it's been awesome talking to you. Thank
you for taking the time and showing me around Auckland in
the great weather and whatnot. And before we go, I guess we you
know, we always kind of like to plug give you the opportunity to
plug yourself so each of you studying the book, how do you
want to be found Do you even want to be found?
Paul Bloem: Hidden not hiding? I try to make a bit of noise on
LinkedIn and it's just PaulBorm_NZ. That's where I'm at
and of course my blog as yucsorted.com. That's where I
am. Yeah, fair enough.
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah, almost. active on the Twitter community.
My handle is @AndrewMorpeth. That might be a bit difficult to
spell. So find me at ucgeek.co That's my blog. So check me out
there and the links to Twitter and various other channels that
I post information on there as well.
Chris Goosen: Cool. I'll put all that in the show notes too. So
folks can just click through and and I guess the next thing when
next time we'll be seeing each other is that summit coming up
in full year? Bring it on month or so just to sort of a month so
I
Paul Bloem: know now it's it's been recorded first round to be
a second. That'd be
Andrew Morpeth: Yeah, fair enough. We know he's not
offering anything
Chris Goosen: we may or may not be a Joey's at some point.
During summer we will be. Well, guys, thank you again for your
time. Really appreciate it. Yeah. So it's the sit down here
and I'm sure we'll be chatting again. Thank you. Cool.
Warren du Toit: Everyone. Before you go, we just wanted to say
thank you for listening. We really enjoyed putting this
podcast together for you every two weeks. Please visit us at
thearchitects.cloud. Alternatively, drop us a tweet.
We'd love to hear what you have to say @thecloudarch