Poor workplace communication is inflicting a serious toll on employee productivity and morale, according to new research from Atlassian.

Research conducted by the collaboration software provider found 87% of staff are wasting an average of five hours a week clarifying confusing emails and fragmented discussions in messaging platforms.

More than eight-in-ten (83%) UK workers told the company they'd experienced misread messages that have triggered real consequences at work – from damaged coworker relationships (38%) to HR escalation (32%).

Two-thirds (64%) have even been reprimanded by their bosses because a message they sent was misunderstood, or the tone came across the wrong way. In some cases, this has gone even further, with 14% saying that miscommunication was a factor in a colleague being dismissed.

Atlassian warned this has become a major source of stress for workers, with 61% saying they have replayed the fallout from a misinterpreted message long after they’ve logged off.

Nearly three-in-ten (29%) said they'd considered quitting altogether after a miscommunication at work. 

Going back to basics

The issue has reached such an extent that one-third of workers said they prefer engaging with colleagues in-person or through virtual face-to-face calls when discussing activities.

Just over than three‑quarters (76%) said even a short recorded video message would help prevent miscommunication by conveying tone, intent, and context more effectively.

“Miscommunication isn’t a personality flaw or a minor quirk of remote work. It’s a measurable drag on productivity, culture, and wellbeing,” said Jesse Feldman, Head of Loom PMM at Atlassian.

"Written communication will always matter, but we can't always outsource complex, sensitive, or nuanced messages to AI writing tools,” Feldman added.

“In the modern working world, leaders and managers need to set the tone by choosing richer formats when it really counts – sometimes a short recorded video is the best way to deliver an update with emotional resonance.”

The firm advises paying more attention to the way written communication such as email or chat is used, and when to consider richer formats of communication.

Using async video, rather than, say, a one-line direct message, can remove uncertainty when tone really matters.

"If you’re about to send something that could reasonably be interpreted three different ways, that’s your cue to switch to a richer channel instead of another text‑heavy message,” Atlassian said.

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Knowledge workers globally are wasting a quarter of their working week tracking down information, new research from Atlassian has revealed.

UK workers specifically waste an average of 9 hours a week locating the information they need to do their work, accounting for hundreds of hours annually and inflicting significant strain on teams.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of UK employees said workloads are more overwhelming than ever, the study noted.

Staff in the UK also report spending nearly half (48%) of their working week on ‘busy work,’ or non-mission-critical work, which includes tasks such as sharing information, tracking people down, or resolving misunderstandings.

A driver of these inefficiencies is a workplace misconception on how to source information, according to Atlassian. Over half (53%) of staff think the only way to get required information is to directly ask someone or schedule a meeting.

This means 55% run into blockades when trying to complete work as they are waiting for other teams and staff members to give them information. Just over one-third (34%) feel that collaboration with other teams slows down their work.

Similarly, 55% admitted to having found out too late about an important decision made by another team, while over half of the UK workforce spends time unknowingly working on the same task as others.

“This research highlights a critical issue in the modern workplace: the systems designed to support employees are not keeping pace with the increasing demands of work,” Molly Sands, head of teamwork labs at Atlassian, said.

“As teams become more cross-functional, the inability to quickly access information is creating bottlenecks that slow progress. This 'digital hide-and-seek' not only wastes time but also stifles creativity and innovation, as employees are forced to focus on administrative tasks rather than high-impact work,” Sands added.

Knowledge workers plagued by efficiency issues

This isn’t the first research to suggest knowledge workers are struggling with inefficiencies in the workplace.

Figures from the Multiverse Skills Intelligence Report in 2024 found that knowledge workers in the UK are wasting 10% of their time owing to a lack of data skills, for example.

In a separate survey from Wrike earlier this year, respondents said their workloads had grown by almost a third between 2023 and 2024, but that they were still being hampered by efficiency problems.

Almost three-in-five UK knowledge workers expressed the desire for fewer applications and less application sprawl to reduce the inefficiencies caused by fragmented workflows.

What can businesses do?

According to Atlassian’s research, 43% of knowledge workers say they could work faster if it were easier to find the information they needed. Additionally, 41% said they could work faster if all the teams in their organization used the same processes to get work done.

The research advised businesses to create clear goals for teams, as alignment on goals means staff are 6.4 times more likely to produce better quality work and 2.2 times more likely to focus their teams on the most important work.

“If all teams worked on mission-critical projects in lockstep, life would be great. Projects would be on time and there'd be no wasted effort,” a Fortune 500 VP commented in the research.

Bryan Stallings, chief evangelist at Lucid Software, said a key hurdle to improved collaboration and productivity often lies in hybrid working setups, which impact alignment between teams.

To counter this, Stallings agreed fostering closer cross-functional collaboration is critical alongside more detailed information sharing between siloed departments.

“Fixing this problem starts with companies reevaluating their tech stack and eliminating less effective applications,” Stallings told ITPro.

“IT decision-makers need to take a well-thought-out approach, researching and only investing in platforms that connect cross-functional teams, accelerate work using visuals, and can be adapted to fit the working styles of their employees,” Stallings added.

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Digital services are pivotal to business – there's no room for debate and this has been known for some time. From massive corporations to sole traders, phasing out old ways of working for new systems is part and parcel of adapting your venture to the demands of the modern era. This may involve simply swapping an older smartphone for a newer one, or leveraging a significant investment in a software solution to help workers stay better connected with one another. But the pace of change has been remarkable. 

In the wake of COVID-19, 77% of businesses were forced to re-examine the employee experience, according to research by Avaya published in November 2020. This is an important piece of context, as it led to significant growth in the collaboration software market, with revenues climbing sharply by 11% between 2019 and 2020 from $11.01 billion to $12.26 billion. This trend continued into 2021, with revenues rising by 9% to $13.39 billion, according to data from Statista. By contrast, year-on-year revenue increases between 2019 and 2020 in comparable categories such as administrative or creative software collapsed.

Growth in the collaboration software market is expected to slow down in the coming years. This reflects the fact many businesses, by now, have already made significant investments in tools like Microsoft Teams and its array of productivity services. But does that mean they're making the most of these investments? 

Connecting with colleagues and customers

Now the dust has settled and hybrid work patterns have begun to solidify, organizations are finding the various technologies they've bought into may not be as connected as they can be. The result is massive untapped potential, especially when it comes to integrating Microsoft's services with the wider technology stack. There is, after all, lots of scope to better connect existing systems with one another without necessarily needing to make fresh rounds of investments – which is where BT could step in to help.

Ensuring your organization has the right infrastructure in place doesn't just involve patching together the various networks and tools to run applications, but it's also about learning how to make all these components work in harmony. Much like an ensemble orchestra, the various components need to be in tune and in sync in order for your business to really be in a position to enjoy the music.  

BT's 20-year partnership with Microsoft has gone from strength to strength, especially as the need to deliver joined-up collaboration and communication software became a key priority following the Covid-19 pandemic. Microsoft Teams Voice, for example, powers high-quality calling between Teams users in the workplace, with BT able to build a unique solution using Direct Routing, Operator Connect or a combination of the two systems. 

Dealing with customers, too, can be tricky – especially for colleagues who may not adhere to the conventional desk or office-based functions. There are segments of the workforce in need of a strategy for technology-based communications that may have been somewhat forgotten in the drive to invest in systems to support a new wave of hybrid and remote working practices. 

Delivery drivers, for example, could well do with systems like Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile, which lets them transform their own smartphone or tablet (or perhaps another device) into a business endpoint securely. This means, if they need to call customers they're delivering to, they're more likely to pick up the phone, it won't be an unrecognized number. BT is the first Microsoft partner capable of delivering such a service for customers in the UK, allowing them to make and receive external calls to both landlines and smartphones. 

Priming your digital infrastructure for the future

When a business makes a serious investment, it pays to investigate how to make the most of that commitment. Building a coherent strategy for the future also demands that all known possibilities and configurations have been explored, as well as whether there may be any crucial tools or features missing from the current set-up.

While things may be ticking over fine, there is likely more that can be done to connect digital services in the best possible way. To explore this possibility, BT and Microsoft experts have produced a free webinar to guide businesses through the process. Hosted by technology journalist and presenter David McClelland, 'Evolve your digital services, starting with Microsoft' will be a fantastic opportunity to hear how best to empower staff, maintain control by doubling down on security, and reconfigure systems as and when needed to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The webinar will also feature unique insight from BT's principal innovation partner Nicola Millard, director of digital work Andrew Small, as well as Microsoft's modern work lead Gareth Bleasdale. 

Although many businesses have made serious investments in collaboration software like Microsoft Teams, they may not be primed to tap into the full potential that such technologies can offer. Together, these four experts will walk businesses through the need-to-knows when it comes to giving their workforce and your customers the best tools to communicate and collaborate now and in the future. 

To learn more about how you can prepare for the digital future, click here to register now for the upcoming webinar 'Evolve your digital services, starting with Microsoft'.

One of the things that has remained constant through all the changes to the workplace in recent years is the need for collaboration. Impromptu meetings with a mentor can lead to career breakthroughs and dependable check-ins can keep teams on track.

To ensure that these valuable workplace experiences can be maintained in our more remote and digital market, businesses have adopted productivity software that enables them to collaborate on documents remotely and embraced video conferencing to a greater degree.

The digital transformation moves made by leaders so far show they understand employees need to be supported on this journey and they will need to plan for greater shifts in the future to retain staff.

Slack’s State of Work in 2023 report found that in-person collaboration was valued among employees for brainstorming sessions or making key team decisions. It also highlighted that when it comes to digital collaboration, unified platforms allow employees to work more productively and intuitively.

While some firms like Google have been pushing their workers to return to the office for several days per week, others such as GitHub have switched to a fully remote working model. It may be a blend of the two approaches that wins the day, however, with research indicating that organizations are increasingly opting for a hybrid workplace. A recent Gartner report found that internationally, 39% of knowledge workers would be working hybrid – spending some time in the office and the rest of it in another location – by the end of 2023 compared to 37% in 2022.

This doesn’t have to be antithetical to effective collaboration. Research from GitHub has shown that developers welcome collaboration over digital channels, documents, and team meetings, with 50% identifying collaborative work with colleagues as leading to better test coverage and 49% saying it helped them write code faster.

Empowering collaboration through the cloud

Many offices rely on phone calls for collaboration with their colleagues, as well as with partners and customers. One could assume this would be something that instant messaging and productivity software struggle to replace. However, managed service providers such as BT can provide cloud telephony solutions that combine the intuitive and centralized environment with existing phone networks.

Microsoft Teams Voice is one such cloud solution to replace traditional telephony and comes with the benefits of guaranteed high-quality voice calls, global calling plans to keep teams connected even when spread around the world, as well as the choice to build it into your existing phone system.

In the UK, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is being completely retired by 2025  and has already been turned off in some parts of the country. This is another reason for businesses to adopt cloud telephony as soon as possible, to ensure the most stable experience for internal collaboration and interactions with customers over the phone.

Businesses can also implement Microsoft Teams Phone through BT, which allows for Private Branch Exchange (PBX) calls via Microsoft Azure. This circumvents the PSTN entirely, which means customers don’t have to pay long-distance call charges when using the service to contact colleagues or customers overseas.

This could be used to improve telephone communication between teams in offices that practice asynchronous collaboration, in which teams operate at different hours of the day depending on their time zone.

Through BT, businesses can take advantage of these benefits with access to voice calling in 40 countries. BT also provides customer assistance with setting up the service, whether through their existing phone system and handsets or via a brand-new migration. Its managed service teams help to run the solution 24/7 and can source devices for setup.

Why telephony is still important in a world of instant messaging

Businesses with a hybrid approach will still have departments containing a mix of people in the office and working remotely and the sight of an office that hosts all employees five days per week has become a rarity.

Solutions such as Microsoft Teams already allow workers to maintain contact in real-time, as well as to share ideas with a wider team or even with their entire organization. It’s vital that workers still have these consistent spaces for conversation and collaboration, which emulate the experience of a shared office while embracing all the benefits of digital collaboration such as cloud documents and centralized file sharing.

Teams can also serve as the antidote to the siloed environment of email. Unlike being carbon copied into endless email chains to maintain oversight of one’s departmental responsibilities, the productivity app allows for messages to be shared widely in relevant channels or sent to individual colleagues if more appropriate.

The pattern of remote and hybrid work that became widespread in 2020 was the accelerated version of a change that had been in the works since the widespread adoption of the internet. Satellite offices and highly mobile workforces were made possible by the widespread availability of 3G in the 2000s and 4G in the 2010s. More powerful business laptops for remote work have empowered a generation of workers to do their jobs on the go.

Telephony has remained unchanged amidst these changes, but with pressures such as the shutdown of PSTN and the undeniable benefits of cloud calling, businesses should consider how they can embrace telephony for collaboration.

Some businesses may have had the same handsets for years and even newer businesses may rely on telephony as a core channel for customers or suppliers. Phone calls may also be one of the main ways in which an employee interacts with their team.

It’s clear that through a combination of messaging apps such as Microsoft Teams and support for existing communications channels such as telephone systems, businesses can support proper collaboration throughout their workforce.

Embracing this through knowledgeable partners such as BT can help the process to come together more effectively, allowing team members across different offices or even regions to work together in the most natural way possible.

A new partnership between Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic that aims to improve AI safety and responsibility is unlikely to meet its targets, according to an analyst.

The Frontier Model Forum has committed itself to the safe development of ‘frontier models’, which it defines as large machine learning models that exceed the most advanced models currently available.

It aims to identify AI best practices, assist the private sector, academics, and policymakers in the implementation of safety measures, educate the public, and deploy AI to fight issues such as climate change.

“It’s nice that these companies have formed this new body because the issues are challenging and common to all model creators and users,” said Avivah Litan, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.  

“But the chances that a group of diehard competitors will arrive at a common useful solution and actually get it to be implemented ubiquitously – across both closed and open source models that they and others control across the globe – is practically zero.”

At present, the Forum is only formed of its founder members but has stated it would welcome applications from organizations that can commit to developing frontier models safely and assisting wider initiatives in the sector.

Meta, which has focused on ‘open’ AI through models such as Llama 2, and AWS which has called for ‘democratized’ AI and favors a broad approach to model access, were absent from the group at the time of launch. 

OpenAI and Microsoft have had a highly successful year of collaboration, with the industry-leading model GPT-4 having powered tools such as ChatGPT and 365 Copilot. 

Google has heavily invested in its own models including PaLM 2, which it uses for its Bard chatbot. Its AI subsidiary Google DeepMind has publicly committed itself to AI safety, with CEO Demis Hassabis long having been a proponent of an ethical approach to the technology.

Anthropic has dominated headlines less than its forum co-founders, but has made waves in the industry since it was founded by ex-OpenAI members in 2021. It claims that its chatbot Claude is safer than alternatives, and has favored a cautious approach to market in contrast with its competitors.

Litan expressed hope that the companies could work to find solutions that could be enforced by governments, and stressed that an international governmental body is necessary to enforce global AI standards but will prove difficult to form.

“We haven’t seen such global government cooperation on climate change where the solutions are already known. I wouldn’t expect global cooperation and governance around AI to be any easier. In fact, it will be harder since solutions are yet unknown. At least these companies can strive to identify solutions, so that’s a good thing.

AI regulation continues at different paces around the world. The UK has appointed a chair to its Foundation Model Taskforce, which seeks to identify guardrails for the technology that can be applied worldwide, but may be falling behind the EU which has already progressed its AI Act through several important rounds of voting. 

Dr Kate Devlin, senior lecturer in social and cultural artificial intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London, told ITPro that the Frontier Model Forum is welcome “in principle”, and highlighted the intention of the companies involved to engage with wider partners as a good step.

“It is not yet clear what form this will take: The announcement seems to focus particularly on technical approaches, but there are much wider socio-technical aspects that need to be addressed when it comes to developing AI responsibly,” said Dr. Devlin.

“It is important to ensure there is no conflict of interest when critically examining the impact this technology is having on the world.”

Dr Devlin is a member of Responsible AI UK, a program that aims to consolidate the responsible AI ecosystem and aims to improve collaboration in the space. 

Backed by the public body UK Research and Innovation, it has committed itself to research and innovation projects in socio-technical and creative fields in addition to STEM, in order to back the full potential of the UK’s AI ecosystem.

Other groups already aiming to provide safety guidelines for the use of AI include the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), which brings together 29 countries under a rotating president country to support the OECD’s Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence.

It works to make AI theory a reality, in line with the concerns of legislators, industry professionals, academics, and civil groups.

The Frontier Model Forum named the G7’s Hiroshima AI process as an initiative it will support. This was an agreement made at the G7 Summit in Japan, with world leaders in attendance asked to collaborate with the OECD and GPAI.

Otter.ai has announced a new AI collaboration tool that acts as a virtual meeting participant, providing users with live insights, summaries, and contextualized content.

With Otter AI Chat, the firm will provide customers with generative AI insights into meetings as they happen, in addition to the live transcription services for which the firm has become known.

Users can ask the AI assistant to bring them up to speed on what has already been discussed in a meeting, ask for more detail on a specific topic or term within the context of a call, or have it produce action points based on a meeting’s outcome.

The tool can be brought into calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet as a virtual participant with inputs sent through each service’s chat function.

In addition to its summarization capabilities, Otter AI Chat can also generate text and provide advice based on the context of a meeting.

In a demo, the tool was asked to evaluate whether a candidate in a mock interview would make a good product manager, and then produce an email thanking the candidate and providing feedback on the interview.

After a meeting has finished, users can go back to any conversation within the platform and ask Otter AI Chat further questions based on that conversation. 

With the announcement, Otter.ai has joined a number of other prominent AI companies in the space of productivity and collaboration tools. 

Google’s Duet AI and Microsoft’s Copilot can provide summarization within their respective environments and generate enterprise content in a range of modes, while both companies also offer chat functionality through Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT respectively.

Richard Ward, chief design officer at Otter.ai told ITPro that there is a clear line between the data on which services such as Bard and ChatGPT were trained, and the data that Otter AI Chat uses to form its responses.

“[ChatGPT] is scraping text from the internet, very general public data, whereas our large speech language model is taking data like this, like you and I are talking about now,” Ward said.

“It's very unstructured, very dynamic, verbal communication. And we think that’s a very different perspective in terms of public written data in ChatGPT.

“Our data is speech and verbal communication, principally in a work environment for enterprise. So most of our conversations that have been part of our large speech language model are more anchored in the enterprise space rather than public information. 

Ward also called the user experience of other generative AI chatbots “linear”, in the sense that they can only be interfaced with in a one-to-one manner with another user.

“Although that’s really powerful, we think it could be yet more powerful if that's more of a group dynamic,” he said.

Otter AI Chat can be accessed by all users in a conversation, either during a meeting or at any point afterward. All participants will be able to see Otter AI Chat inputs and outputs, and the company hopes that this will allow teams to use it more collaboratively.

“First and foremost, we see it as a communication and collaboration tool for teams,” Ward said, but indicated that Otter.ai sees potential for this to be used as a powerful information tool down the line.

“If I'm a CEO at a FTSE 100 company, the ability to have visibility to all conversations or meetings that are happening across our company and be able to, with different permission levels, understand the pulse of the organization… that's longer term, but for sure, I think that's very interesting.”

In March, the firm launched its first AI assistant OtterPilot, which can join a video call to provide automatic meeting notes and provide an overall final summary. Otter AI Chat will be released as part of OtterPilot to integrate with customers’ existing stacks.

Unlike tools such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can use metadata from across an enterprise’s estate to inform its outputs, each instance of OtterPilot can only draw on the data within its assigned conversation.

Ward revealed that Otter.ai is interested in widening this scope down the line, but that this would only ever pertain to OtterPilot being able to draw on other conversations saved in Otter such as two meetings with the same participants held a month apart.

“We wouldn't be mining Slack channels and email, we're very much keeping it to the Otter platform,” he stated.

“But what's nice about the Otter platform is that it's agnostic, so if your next meeting is on Google Meet, you can use Otter across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft whereas Copilot is just for Microsoft.”

The tool is accessible via the Otter.ai web app, as well as its iOS and Android apps.

Otter.ai has been working with AI for more than five years, with efforts primarily focused on its own proprietary speech recognition and summarization model. Ward told ITPro that the firm’s training models only use customer data to improve on an opt-in basis.

The firm’s tech has now transcribed more than a billion meetings for an overall total of twenty billion minutes.

While ChatGPT and Bard use text scraped from the internet, Otter.ai's language model is trained on unstructured, verbal communication.

At launch, Otter AI Chat will support written prompts entered directly into the chat window of a meeting.

Later this year the firm aims to roll out verbal prompts to Otter AI Chat, which will provide another way for meeting participants to access the assistant’s functions without having to break the flow of a meeting at all.

At the time of writing, Otter can only transcribe the English spoken word. 

Ward told ITPro that although further language and accent support is not currently a high priority, it is something the company could look into down the line, as it looks to serve its growing customer base.

Microsoft couldn't have launched its Teams collaboration platform at a more appropriate time. Unveiled in 2017, it had three years to mature before COVID-19 ushered in a new era of hybrid work. Three years after the pandemic had begun changing our relationship with work, Microsoft decided the collaboration product was due for a revamp. It’s reviewed the entire application from the ground up, in response to feedback users were finding it slow. 

Microsoft has long operated a public preview program to test new features to early adopters before making them generally available. Users can only gain access if their admins assign them a policy allowing it. They can then choose 'public preview' in the 'About' submenu next to their names.

Don't confuse this with the 'New Teams' software option, which is such a fundamental restructure that it gets its own toggle in the Windows version of the desktop app. Users can flip this toggle to switch between the old and new versions at will. Microsoft will drip-feed new features into the preview version over the next few months so eager users can try them first while falling back to the classic desktop app if anything goes wrong. 

Administrators can turn on access to the new Teams client in the same update policy that they use to enable public preview, but it is a separate option. 

What the new Microsoft Teams features include

When a kindly admin enables the new Teams client, what goodies do their brave users get access to? For now, the most significant improvements are under the hood. Microsoft says the new Teams starts in half the time as its predecessor and uses half the disk space and memory overall. That's due in part to some major architectural changes in the software. 

An updated back-end

Teams Classic was originally built in AngularJS. Microsoft moved to React for a more compact code base but ran the client on both frameworks for a while, making it slow and bulky. It’s now switched entirely to React for the new software. It also introduced a new client data layer that handles the data processing for Teams. That gave it more speed by enabling it to run more software threads in parallel, removing some of the strain from the JavaScript layer. It also ditched Electron as the host for Teams in favor of WebView2, which is a control that allows developers to embed web components like HTML and JavaScript in native apps. It uses Microsoft Edge as its rendering engine.

These architectural enhancements are like engine tweaks – they'll make the software purr along much faster than it used to under the hood. However, Teams is also getting some new driver controls on the dashboard. Many of these are due to roll out over the coming months, but there are some noticeable improvements already.

A new authentication model

One big win that is already available is the updated authentication model. In the past, you'd have to log in and out of your Teams account to access teams across different organizations. This forced account-hopping added speed bumps for many freelancers forced to use Teams by multiple clients. Workarounds to deal with this included using the desktop client for one organization and a browser – or even multiple browsers – for others.

The authentication change means that you can jump between different organizations' accounts without signing out, and you can also see notifications from all of them in one place. This is great, but with external contractors so prevalent in the modern workplace, it's difficult to consider this as an innovation. It's more like a long-overdue necessity.

A slicker user interface

The other area Microsoft wants to innovate is in the new Teams' visual design. It’s toned down the purple in the new client, and subtly changed the way it displays information, particularly in channel-based conversation flows. In the old Teams, you'd make posts at the bottom of a conversation, and then you'd scroll up to read more of that in-channel chat. Now, you post at the top of the channel and scroll infinitely downward through the threaded list of discussions. You can also pop out conversations into separate windows for added focus.

The Activity section has also changed to offer more focus. In the incumbent Teams, the feed shows you all posts. In the new one, you only see individual posts. You select a 'Go to channel' option to access the full list.

These changes are all very subtle. Perhaps it’s by design we didn’t notice them much, but that the client seemed snappy and responsive. In time, Teams users will get more notable aesthetic features. For example, they'll be able to configure groups individually to reflect their different personalities. We couldn't find this option at the time of writing, but we remain hopeful that your organization's 'Mad About Cats' social group will soon no longer have to look like your legal team's process review channel, much to the joy of office feline lovers everywhere. 

Microsoft Teams collaboration features

There are other improvements currently in public preview, including a speaker coach that reports back on your speaking performance during a meeting. You'll be able to hear how repetitive you were and how much you relied on filler words. 

Some other features are still in the pipeline. The new Teams still didn't support third-party or line-of-business applications at the time of writing, while call queues and meeting breakout rooms had yet to be implemented. These are on the way, though. 

While we wait for these shiny new features, we might also have to contend with some broken existing ones. One welcome feature already in Teams was the ability to insert Loop components directly into chats. Loop is Microsoft's cross-application platform for editable widgets that enable you to insert editable items like tables or tasks in chats. We noticed a server error that stopped it from appearing in the new Teams, although this later resolved itself. 

Microsoft will hopefully iron out wrinkles like these, but the new Teams is currently a work in progress. Some basic features – such as the ability to create a channel – are still missing. Consequently, Microsoft admits the new Teams is presently less functional than the incumbent one. 

So the biggest enhancements in the new Teams desktop at present are under the hood. For more eye-catching innovations, we must turn to a whole other set of preview features as part of the Teams public preview that Microsoft runs to test upcoming enhancements. One of these is the avatars app, which has been in preview since October. 

The avatar app allows you to replace yourself with up to three different avatar versions for different Teams meetings and calls. Adjust your body shape, face, hair, appearance, and what you're wearing. You can even add prosthetics. Teams can then superimpose the moving avatar on your webcam video, hiding the real you with the fake one during video calls.

It was fun messing around with this for a few minutes, and the idea of not having to show yourself on a bad hair day has some merit, but we’ll probably stick to just leaving the camera off. 

Microsoft Teams AI features

Perhaps a more interesting future enhancement is the inclusion of its AI-powered Copilot assistant with select customers. That feature allows users to include an AI participant in meetings who will carry out tasks on the fly, such as summarizing what’s been said, and even drawing up pros and cons tables around different decisions. This could be the most exciting enhancement of all. 

According to the Financial Times (FT), the future could also see Teams going solo. Microsoft is reportedly preparing to break up the band, spinning the product off from the Office suite to head off an EU investigation. 

Perhaps this partly explains the preoccupation with revamping Teams. It’s a complex product with many features, and Microsoft has done a good job of making it faster and less demanding on systems so that it can dominate the collaboration space.

However, industry contacts that have worked closely upgrading their clients from basic email to Teams have reported that it's a struggle getting users to play with Teams’ constant trickle of new features. We suspect most people just want to get their jobs done without unnecessary tinkering. While some landmark Teams enhancements such as live transcription have been invaluable, there’s a lot of ephemera here. More superfluous features mean more fuss.

Microsoft is touting the major Teams revamp just as it discontinues the free edition of Teams Classic. From April 12, users of that product – including paying Microsoft 365 Personal subscribers – had to upgrade to Teams Essentials for a $4 monthly fee or lose their existing Teams data and history. Microsoft flagged this change in advance, but one Microsoft tech support worker told ITPro in late April he was tired after fielding calls from confused, furious customers about this all month.

Microsoft is betting that a faster, leaner version of the product will keep users away from simpler, easier-to-use, and free collaboration alternatives from the likes of Google and Zoom. Let’s hope it’s right.

Staff at companies adopting generative AI tools are 90% more likely to report higher levels of productivity, according to new research. 

The State of Work report from Slack, which polled more than 18,000 desk workers globally, found that staff are increasingly receptive to generative AI tools being adopted in their workplace. 

More than three-quarters (77%) of respondents said that being able to automate routine tasks, such as expense report approvals, would drastically improve their productivity. 

The study revealed that those who currently use automation in the workplace estimate that they save an average of 3.6 hours per week. 

This equates to around a month each year saved due to improved productivity due to automation, the report noted. 

Brent Hyder, president and chief people officer at Salesforce said the study highlights the growing appetite among staff for the use of generative AI tools and automation of daily tasks. 

“The workplace is continuously evolving, and never more so than in the past few years. Companies must rethink the employee experience to increase productivity today,” he said.  

“Organizations that embrace new ways of working, such as flexibility, automation and AI, and collaboration tools will help their employees - and ultimately their customers - find greater success.”

The launch of the report coincides with Slack’s  announcement that it plans to implement a new “conversational AI experience” in its workplace productivity suite to support staff. 

Slack GPT will provide users with native AI features, including the ability to use generative AI app integrations as well as the chance to access secure customer data insights from the Customer 360 and Data Cloud functions. 

“Working with Einstein GPT, Slack GPT will unlock the power of CRM and conversational data to help everyone in the organization be more productive,” the company said in an announcement this week. 

Companies not keeping pace with AI demand

While employees appear increasingly receptive to generative AI, Slack’s report suggested that some companies are failing to keep pace with the demand for such tools. 

Nearly two-thirds (60%) of respondents said their company has not incorporated any AI tools to support productivity while just under half (43%) said their team has “not created automations to make their work processes easier or more efficient”.

“AI and automation are on everyone’s minds in 2023. Yet it is crystal clear from this research that most organizations are barely scratching the surface of their productivity value in daily work,” said Rob Seaman, senior vice president of enterprise product at Slack. 

“Automation can save employees up to an entire working month per year, freeing up their time for more meaningful, impactful work. There’s a huge opportunity for organizations to help employees work smarter, more efficiently, and more pleasantly.”

Business appetite for AI is growing

The publication of Slack’s report follows recent insight from Gartner which suggested business appetite for generative AI tools is growing as companies look to capitalize on recent developments in the space. 

Research from the consultancy firm revealed that 45% of business leaders have increased AI investments on the back of publicity around ChatGPT and its potential benefits for organizations. 

Nearly three-quarters (70%) of executives also said their organization is currently in “investigation and exploration mode” with regard to the implementation of generative AI. 

Just under one-fifth (19%) also said they are in pilot or production mode and plan to integrate generative AI tools in organizational processes. 

Frances Karamouzis, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, said the research highlights the growing interest in the potential benefits that generative AI could deliver for businesses in the long term. 

“The generative AI frenzy shows no signs of abating,” she said.  

“Organizations are scrambling to determine how much cash to pour into generative AI solutions, which products are worth the investment, when to get started, and how to mitigate the risks that come with this emerging technology.” 

ITPro Network bullish on generative AI

Earlier this week, members of the ITPro Network revealed that their organizations are also currently integrating or exploring the use of generative AI tools in their business. 

Mark Evans, IT director at Tillia Homes, told ITPro that he has been using ChatGPT extensively in daily operations and has harnessed the powerful chatbot to generate PowerShell scripts and finetune Excel formulae. 

Evans noted that ChatGPT has enabled him to “work smarter, not harder”. 

David Cartwright, CISO at Santander International, also sung ChatGPT’s praises when speaking to ITPro, revealing that the tool has proved so useful that he signed up to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus subscription service. 

Cartwright has been using ChatGPT to support a variety of processes, such as writing job descriptions for roles that Santander is seeking to fill. 

Microsoft has launched a new feature for Teams allowing small and medium businesses (SMBs) to collect payments from within meetings.

The capability comes in the form of a Microsoft Teams app that can be downloaded and installed from within the Teams platform.

Microsoft partnered with payment firms PayPal and Stripe, as well as GoDaddy, to bring the application to the platform. 

Currently in public preview, available only to US and Canada customers at present, Microsoft envisions the Teams Payments app to be used by a range of SMBs to make collecting work-related payments easier. 

“Our partnership brings Stripe into one of the world's most popular collaboration platforms and will help millions of companies accelerate their online revenue growth,” said Mike Clayville, chief revenue officer at Stripe. 

“With Stripe, more businesses can now accept payments as easily as launching a video conference, chat, or virtual presentation within Microsoft Teams.” 

Teams can be used for workplace meetings, but also for running virtual appointments, classes, and webinars, for example, and these can now be paid for inside Teams itself, potentially allowing for a smoother transaction experience.

“For example, a lawyer or financial advisor can collect payments for consultative appointments, a real estate instructor can do the same for license-renewal sessions, or a teacher for tutoring classes – all while the customer is engaging with them,” said Microsoft in a blog post.

SMBs looking to take advantage of the new feature will have to connect their Microsoft Teams instance to their respective PayPal, Stripe, and GoDaddy accounts.

From there, they can send payment requests to customers from within the meeting itself. Customers are able to send money via credit and debit cards, digital wallets, and more.

The Payments app also allows SMBs to track payments that have been made and those that remain outstanding from a dedicated pane inside the Teams application.

Microsoft has made the Payments app free to all users including both Teams Essentials and Microsoft 365 customers. It’s now available in the Teams Store with support for Stripe and PayPal, while the GoDaddy integration is “coming soon”.

“Small businesses continue to face many, many challenges. Whether dealing with a cash flow crunch, finding new customers, or expanding to new channels, small businesses need partners to help them solve these problems,” said Bernardo Martinez, vice president of microbusiness at PayPal.

“Our collaboration with Microsoft allows us to address a common pain point – accepting payments for virtual customer interactions – by providing them with a trusted method that both consumers and businesses know well.”

Technology has played a key role in establishing new ways of working since 2020, but it means our work and personal lives have converged. For some among us, it means working longer hours, with less physical separation between work and home life. 

For many, too, the working day now involves back-to-back virtual meetings with little time for creativity or informal connection – both of which are fundamental elements of the overall experience. Recruitment, onboarding, and learning have also been challenged by the lack of in-person contact, with some employees feeling disconnected and unsupported. 

It hasn’t been all bad, though. Flexible schedules have been a huge help for people with care needs, while many appreciate dropping the hours-long commute every day. That freedom has indeed been harnessed in positive ways to rebalance work and life. 

Evidently, everything changed, but not everybody felt the change equally. Technology is  promoting an always-on culture and workers are burning out harder and faster as a result. Thankfully for businesses, though, these same technologies can be pivoted to stripping away the downsides of hybrid work. 

Did COVID-19 really cause productivity to rise?

Several studies into the effects of working from home during the pandemic have linked the lockdown with a rise in productivity, but the University of Essex and the University of Chicago conducted joint research that found the opposite. 

This study was unique in studying metrics rather than reported feelings, comparing productivity before and after the remote working phase of COVID-19 based on analysing data from more than 10,000 people working in a large Asian IT company.

The study found while total hours worked increased by roughly 30% – including an 18% rise in out-of-hours working – average output did not significantly change. Technology played a central part in facilitating this odd shift in working hours. The time spent in meetings powered by videoconferencing rose significantly during the pandemic, as did email traffic. 

Meetings could often break into what would otherwise be periods of uninterrupted work, which may have caused concentration loss and taken workers longer to complete tasks. The research also found while there were more meetings overall, there were fewer supervision meetings and coaching sessions.

“Our explanation is that there were more distractions at home – especially with children – and that the costs of communication and collaboration were significantly higher away from the office,” said Dr Christoph Siemroth, who worked on the study. 

“Time in formal meetings increased a lot, including teleconferences and email traffic also went up. Meetings and other coordination activities appeared to disrupt “focus time” when employees were able to work without interruption. 

“Additional evidence for this view is that employees networked less – they had fewer contacts with colleagues and business units both inside and outside the firm. Despite having more meetings, staff had fewer supervision meetings or coaching sessions.”

This is, however, just one study and others demonstrate the opposite. Those reliant on self-reporting show staff benefit from increased wellbeing, higher productivity and satisfaction, according to research by the UK Parliament. The picture is certainly mixed, and it isn’t an exact science. 

Fighting the always-on culture

What’s clear is the lines are blurring between remote workers’ work and personal lives, a development that Toby Pochron, employment director at law firm Freeths, suggests has continued post-pandemic. 

“With the ability to access work from the comfort of their homes, the line between work and personal time has become blurred,” he says, pointing to how always-on technologies have exacerbated this problem. 

Workers, for example, are constantly connected to not just friends and family but colleagues and employers through the same devices. The ever-present ability to check emails, for example, is a major problem. Once emails are checked, if “urgent” things are identified, there is a temptation to deal with them immediately, even if that means outside working hours. He also identifies virtual meeting fatigue – too many meetings, too frequently, which can lead to a feeling of stress and burnout. 

Amy Finn, people and talent expert, PA Consulting adds another dimension to the levels of stress and anxiety the “always on” culture can bring. She points out that hybrid working allowed some firms to focus on globalization or international working. This brings with it challenges as “employees have found they need to flex working patterns and work longer hours in order to collaborate with virtual teams”. This often removes workers’ control over schedules and may, again, contribute to longer working and out-of-hours working.

Using tech to fight the new burnout

Just as technology is a contributing factor to the new burnout, it can be used to help alleviate it. But it’s vital to recognize that technology is not the answer to burnout, just one tool in the box. 

Pochron suggests time management and productivity tools, mental health and wellbeing apps, and automation can all play a part in helping people manage their work-life balance and avoid burnout. He’s clear that managers need to take a positive role here, for example, “using software to track the performance of remote workers and adjust their workload, or provide them with additional support when necessary”.

Finn echoes this point, telling ITPro that employees need to take control of setting boundaries, but that there’s also a responsibility for the organization to “reset the boundaries and work with their people to define the new rules of engagement”. 

The Gallup report Amplifying Wellbeing at Work and Beyond Through the Power of Recognition, published in 2022, showed fulfilling employee recognition can reduce burnout such that employees are up to 90% less likely to report being burned out at work "always" or "very often". 

Technology can play a part here through digital recognition programs which support, celebrate and promote wellbeing and allow coworkers to bond across remote working situations. Gallup says such programs can help workers get to know each other and fortify social wellbeing.

In all of this, it is vital to realise a few home truths. Firstly, technology is a tool and, used poorly, it can fuel the problem of burnout. Used well, however, it can be a mitigation. Secondly, people are all different, and what one might see as a perfectly fine work pattern that doesn’t generate burnout, another might find challenging. Finally, the need for people to feel connected, valued and well-rewarded is equally important whether work is entirely from home, hybrid or office based. 

The term metaverse was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. It’s an interconnected virtual world, focused on social connectivity. The metaverse, as we know it today, is being fuelled by advancing virtual reality (VR) technology, and it’s influenced by the principles of Web3, touted as the next evolutionary step in the internet.

By 2026, a quarter of the global population will use the metaverse for at least an hour each day, research suggests. Barriers to adoption remain stark, and businesses are struggling to justify metaverse investment. Indeed, generative AI has stolen the metaverse’s thunder somewhat by demonstrating solid business use cases. 

Metaverse technology could yet become useful, albeit sparingly deployed. There are potential use cases in training or networking, while it could also power the next generation of digital twins, to be deployed in medical diagnostics or in crime scene examinations.

The metaverse isn’t without its dangers, though. Just as crime has increasingly moved online, Interpol anticipates the metaverse will become a fresh vector for cyber crime. Cyber attacks are, indeed, an international problem, with infrastructure, perpetrators and victims often on different continents. With businesses hoping to use the metaverse safely and securely, Interpol is making a rare gambit to get ahead of the cyber criminals.

The metaverse’s cyber security challenges 

Concerns remain about whether adequate mechanisms exist – or are in development –  to protect metaverse users. One major challenge will be authenticating the digital identity of all users, to ensure malicious actors can be properly identified. The anonymising nature of the internet, and the metaverse, means the issue persists. There have been repeated proposals for mandating digital identities, but these have been controversial.

Legislation and enforcement typically lag behind technology. Not all acts criminalised in the physical world, either, are considered crimes when committed online. One example is how the avatar of a 21-year-old researcher was sexually assaulted while using Meta’s VR platform. Interpol has already highlighted significant concerns regarding social engineering scams, as well as the prevalence of extremism and misinformation. As the metaverse becomes part of our work culture, it’ll lead to new ways in which crimes, including sexual assault, fraud, phishing, data theft and money laundering, can be committed.

The metaverse has also created a new avenue for data collection and processing. While regulatory frameworks already exist, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018, the data collected and stored by firms operating metaverse platforms will create further challenges, especially regarding data protection, privacy and human rights. This, in turn, has implications for cross-border data exchange. Platforms will need measures to guarantee user safety and privacy, ranging from mutually-agreed technical standards to data proteciton by design principles.

How Interpol is planning for the future

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has recently partnered with Interpol, Meta, Microsoft and others to define and govern the development of the metaverse. But the elephant in the room is its fragmented development. Unlike in Snow Crash, there isn’t one metaverse, but potentially thousands.

Each company is building its own siloed digital space, and there’s no mutually agreed definition of what the metaverse actually is. There’s also been little attempt so far to establish shared points of commonality so the various metaverses can integrate with each other – not even in terms of the language used. Indeed, different terminology is in circulation, such as a user’s ‘avatar’ in one metaverse being called a ‘user profile’ in another, sewing the seeds for confusion cyber gangs can seek to exploit in future.

To overcome some of the potential law enforcement challenges, Interpol has created its own metaverse. Users are able to immerse themselves in a virtual representation of Interpol’s General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon. It allows legislators and law enforcement organisations to directly understand how the metaverse operates: by experiencing it for themselves. Interpol has also established an expert group, which will highlight law enforcement concerns and promote secure by design philosophies.

“By identifying these risks from the outset, we can work with stakeholders to shape the necessary governance frameworks and cut off future criminal markets before they are formed,” says Madan Oberoi, Interpol’s executive director of technology and innovation, in a statement released by Interpol. “Only by having these conversations now can we build an effective response.”

The future is here – but isn’t evenly distributed

The UK government has chosen to take a general approach to regulating the metaverse by incorporating this into the Online Safety Bill, which Ofcom will alone enforce. “The landmark Online Safety Bill captures all services where users can interact online, from websites and apps to the metaverse,” a government spokesperson tells ITPro. “We’re committed to making the internet a safe place and this bill ensures we can keep pace with technology’s rapid changes both now and in the future.”

With the metaverse developed in silos, it’s unlikely there’ll be further coordination, but a degree of collaboration would help ensure interoperability and security by design. This would enable the metaverse to become a safer place to work and conduct business, thereby ensuring user confidence and a swift uptake. 

With the metaverse being an embryonic technology, there are significant issues that need to be addressed. Interpol’s focus on policing the metaverse is a step in the right direction, but it’s likely to be a rapidly evolving area for law enforcement, which will change as the technology does. Legislators need to collaborate with technologists and platforms to develop a feasible regulatory legislative framework for tackling crime within the metaverse.

There’s a technology that will change the face of business forever. It’s received billions in investment from some of the world's largest tech firms and is the realisation of a concept long touted in science fiction novels. It is, of course, artificial intelligence (AI) – but two years ago, you could be forgiven for believing the described innovation was the metaverse.

The so-called ‘metaverse’ was, for a time, hailed as one of the most exciting and valuable tools for businesses in the near future. Organisations were told to prepare for virtual meeting environments and, with the rise of remote work during the pandemic, it seemed like a natural progression of sorts. But the modern father of the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg, has now reportedly abandoned his child, telling executives to find ways to pivot to the fledgling generative AI instead.

Has generative AI killed the metaverse dream?

The main failure of delivering metaverse tech has been the lack of a cohesive vision. Demo after demo has come and gone, with businesses none the wiser for how they seek to benefit from virtual reality (VR) meetings or poorly-rendered virtual environments. Hands-on experiences have been underwhelming rather than revolutionary.

Many businesses have only recently bought into full-time video conferencing, settled into Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and embraced productivity apps with which they’re comfortable. Many businesses are also keen to revert back to life before hybrid work, jaded by videoconferencing and productivity paranoia. To expect organisations to adopt clunky VR headsets or mocap suits, c-suites will need a lot more than a Second Life reboot.

The rise and fall of the metaverse can be compared with the blockchain hype cycle. Many companies sought to implement the blockchain into workflows despite it serving little material benefit. Others were unconvinced by vague promises of more secure storage; after all, why should a company with a secure, efficient database system rip all that up to store data on a new solution just because it’s trending?

This isn’t to say generative AI has its value locked in – far from it. Consider the fact the meteoric rise of generative AI has been anything but. Speak to an expert on the subject and they'll say the popularity of large language models (LLMs) results from decades of research.

Although 'AI' has long been associated with the furthest capabilities of technology, generative AI has been the remit of academics for almost its whole conceptual existence. OpenAI and others controlled the conversation for years but failed to make waves. Tweaks to GPT-3 to remove its dangerous tendencies went some way to proving the technology’s worth, but only with the public release of ChatGPT did the technology really turn heads.

Hot off the heels of a successful DALL·E 2 launch, OpenAI launched the chatbot at exactly the right time to grab public attention. With a captive audience eager to share use cases online, OpenAI could sit back and enjoy the conversation flourish online, with people using ChatGPT in a variety of innovative ways. GPT-4 is now taking it to another level.

Generative AI is everything the metaverse wasn’t

Meta, which rebranded in anticipation of the glorious arrival of metaverse demand, has bet on the wrong horse. Its financial performance towards the end of 2022 has already spooked investors, and Meta’s since engaged in a series of widespread layoffs in the wake of what it dubbed poor planning. The firm sank $15 billion into metaverse R&D, with Zuckerberg reportedly pushing for a sharp increase in spending. Reality Labs, Meta’s mixed reality spin-off, became almost solely focused on fulfilling the vision for building out Horizon Worlds. Now, reports suggest, the metaverse dream has come crashing down, with Zuckerberg reorienting the company towards generative AI.

But Meta faces stiff competition in this market, with the likes of Google’s Bard and ChatGPT already miles ahead, offering businesses good user experiences and hyperscaler accessibility. Meta did release its own LLM, a 7 to 65 billion parameter model named LLaMA. But soon after its limited release, the model leaked online and could be irrevocably stored on Bitcoin for anyone to access.

While it seems too late for Meta to be at the forefront of generative AI, it could still carve out small successes. For example, the recently-released Segment Anything Model (SAM) can pick objects out of images and videos for computer vision or augmented reality (AR).

In a recent episode of the ITPro Podcast, too, it was suggested the job title ‘chief metaverse officer’ could be a sign the metaverse is entering the next stage of the hype cycle. As with Google Glass or Microsoft’s HoloLens, there might be some compelling niche industrial use cases for the metaverse, such as powering the next generation of digital twins. It’d make sense that select companies appoint an executive to oversee this.

Nevertheless, the metaverse was never destined for the widespread adoption or investment that AI models now enjoy. Generative AI has lived up to every promise the metaverse was desperate to make, and it’s right the former has won out in the war of public perception.

Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft Teams in China via its local partner 21Vianet.

The tech giant launched the collaboration platform in the country on 1 April, at the same time as upgrading Office 365 to Microsoft 365, which will also be operated by 21Vianet.

“Under the premise of fully satisfying the Chinese market's requirements for data security, personal information protection and other laws and regulations, Microsoft and 21Vianet Blue Cloud have joined hands to officially launch the Microsoft Teams service operated by 21Vianet for the Chinese market,” the company said in a blog post.

Microsoft said that Teams has more than 280 million monthly users around the world after being launched globally in 2017.

Users in China were still able to use the service before it officially launched, although they may have experienced some latency due to the country's 'Great Firewall'.

Microsoft has advised businesses in the past on how to operate their Microsoft 365 accounts in the country if they have a branch or office there.

“For enterprises with global Microsoft 365 tenants and a corporate presence in China, Microsoft 365 client performance for China-based users can be complicated by factors unique to China telco's internet architecture,” the company said in a notice.

“China ISPs have regulated offshore connections to the global public internet that go through perimeter devices that are prone to high levels of cross-border network congestion. This congestion creates packet loss and latency for all internet traffic going into and out of China,” it said.

Users in the country who connect to global Microsoft 365 tenants from locations like their houses or hotels, without using an enterprise network, may have experienced poor network performance in the past. This is because the traffic has to go through China’s “congested cross-border network circuits”.

The new offering of Teams may improve the service within the country, but it may not change anything for global companies who need to communicate with their branches in China. It can be assumed that internet traffic from outside of the country’s borders will still need to go through the same “cross-border congestion”.

Microsoft said it doesn’t operate the service itself and it will instead be operated by 21Vianet. This partner will provide hosting, managed network services, and cloud computing infrastructure services.

21Vianet is a Microsoft strategic partner that is in charge of operating Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform in China.

It also operates Office 365 services in the country, and claims to be the largest carrier-neutral internet data centre service provider in China.

“By licensing Microsoft technologies, 21Vianet operates local Office 365 data centres to provide the ability to use Office 365 services while keeping data within China. 21Vianet also provides subscription and billing services, as well as support,” said Microsoft.

"Due to the unique nature of the China services – operated by a partner from data centres inside China – there are some features that have not yet been enabled,” the tech giant added. “Customers will see the services come closer to full feature parity over time.”

Microsoft and China's 'Great Firewall'

In October 2022, China reportedly upgraded its Great Firewall to crack down on Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption tools, which citizens had used to evade censorship.

Users had reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked, which was done by blocking the specific port the circumvention services listed on.

The year before, in October 2021, Microsoft decided to shut LinkedIn down in China which was going to be replaced by a standalone job application platform.

Social media platforms in the country have to remove content deemed inappropriate which was uploaded by users. LinkedIn had already been ordered to perform a self-evaluation and suspend new sign-ups of users inside China after failing to control political content on the platform.

“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” Mohak Shroff said at the time, senior vice-president of engineering at LinkedIn.

“We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

The tech giant had been expanding its business in the country, and in June 2021 it revealed it was set to add four new data centres in China by early 2022 to expand its service capacity.

It already had six data centres in the country, and was making the move due to new regulation in China which encouraged domestic and foreign companies to shift to local data management.

Microsoft has launched a new platform built for collaboration to try and simplify how teams work on projects together.

The new platform, Microsoft Loop, is currently in public preview and allows teams to organise everything they need for a project into one unified workspace, including documents, files, and tools. The aim is to make it easier for teams to work together without having to jump between apps.

Loop consists of three main features: Workspaces, pages, and components.

When you create a workspace, Loop will suggest content based on what you name it. The content includes Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, notes from meetings, and more. This content will then be organised into pages to make it easier to view.

Microsoft described pages in Loop as 'flexible canvases'. In pages, users can leave comments or emoji reactions to share and work on ideas.

Users can also turn part of a Loop page into a 'component' which can then be copied and pasted across Microsoft 365 apps, including Teams or Outlook.

The tech giant said this can help to share information with different teams easily. Components automatically update, no matter where they’ve been shared, to allow teams to stay updated with any changes.

For example, a team may create a to-do list and share this as a component outside of the workspace in an external Microsoft Word document. Once a task is completed and struck off the list in the workspace, this will be automatically updated in the document.

Loop also comes with progress trackers, custom labels, and notifications to help teams stay aligned. Teammates can be assigned tasks which sync through Microsoft Planner and To Do so users can know what work they need to get done.

Microsoft is also bringing Copilot to Loop to provide AI-powered suggestions on how teams can work or collaborate, although this feature is in private preview for now.

Users can give it a prompt, such as “help me create a mission statement”, or it can guide users through prompts like create, brainstorm, or describe. It can also provide summaries of each workspace’s page to help teams understand what each section is about quickly.

“At its core, Microsoft Loop is about people – people who want to create together with ease, no matter where they are or what tools they use,” the company said. “It’s a transformative co-creation experience that brings together teams, content, and tasks across your tools and devices.”

The new platform is similar to Notion, a popular app that provides an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, task management, and project management.

It also has a similar layout, with the platform dividing its different parts into Teamspaces, Projects, and Docs. However, it lacks the component functionality that Microsoft has created.

Businesses that don't want to commit to long-term contracts for cloud collaboration services should check out HiDrive from web-hosting company Ionos. You can choose between four plans, and all are available on affordable monthly contracts so you can cancel them with minimum notice.

Ionos doesn't offer free trials but you can try it out for next to nothing, with a one-year HiDrive Business contract currently costing a piffling 50p per month for five users and 1TB of storage. We wanted to see everything HiDrive has to offer so we tried out the Pro plan, which costs £20 per month, starts with 2TB of cloud storage for ten users, enables support for the SMB/CIFS, FTP/SFTP, Rsync, SCP and Git protocols, and rounds it off with data backup services for users' personal devices.

The HiDrive admin portal is simple to use, and you create new users by sending email invitations. For greater security, you can globally enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and assign admin rights to selected users, although roles aren't supported so they will have full access to all settings.

After creating their account, users can download the Windows or macOS desktop syncing app. This worked fine on our Windows 11 clients, and the latest version sees a redesigned interface with easier access to all features.

Users choose the cloud folders they want synchronised to their local mapped drive and how to respond when external storage devices are inserted. Along with encryption of data in flight and at rest in the HiDrive cloud servers, the Pro plan enables end-to-end encryption, although this is left in the hands of each user who can choose to apply this from the desktop app and manage their own keys.

Device backups are also controlled entirely by users. They can enable this for selected folders, schedule it to run regularly and recover data from the app or their own portal. A concern is that total cloud storage is not per user but shared among them all and, as admins have no control over device backups, they'll need to monitor usage closely.

HiDrive doesn't do file versioning, but all plans provide automatic backup of cloud data. Admins can run this as often as every four hours, retain data for up to a year, and users can access the backups from their portal and restore selected items to a cloud folder or download them as ZIP files.

Each user has a personal repository in their portal for creating folders and uploading files to them. They can choose to share selected items in this area with anyone, including external collaborators, by emailing a web link with optional password protection, read/write privileges and expiry dates.

Sharing files between team members is handled by a "Common" area in the web portal. Only account administrators are allowed to create new folders within this and determine which users have read or read/write access, after which they become accessible in their own portal.

No Outlook or Gmail plugins are provided so all sharing and file upload requests must be sent from the user portal, with the latter limiting maximum file sizes to 2GB. HiDrive doesn't integrate with any third-party apps, but users can load popular files such as Word documents or Excel spreadsheets from their portal and edit them in a browser without needing the relevant app installed.

Small businesses that want simple cloud file-sharing services will find Ionos HiDrive Pro ticks a lot of boxes. App integrations and collaboration tools are minimal, but it's easy to use and, although cloud storage is shared, it's still comparatively good value.

Businesses sharing very large files will find ShareFile is a great choice, as all three plans provide unlimited cloud storage and support maximum upload and download file sizes of 100GB. It's good value, too, as the Standard plan provides essential file sharing and syncing services, starts from £40 per month (billed yearly) and includes five employee users.

We tested the Premium plan, which ups the monthly price to £99 for the same number of users and enables a wealth of extra features. These include Windows and macOS Outlook and Gmail plugins, encrypted emails, Microsoft 365 integration, workflows and e-signature services.

ShareFile supports two types of users, and only those defined as employees consume a licence. These users can create and share personal folders, add e-signatures and have any of 30 admin privileges delegated to them, such as user management, accessing other users' folders and managing the company account.

Clients are classed as users external to your business, and you are able to extend basic collaboration facilities to them. They are only allowed to install the Windows ShareFile Files desktop syncing app and access folders they have been invited to, with all three plans allowing you to create as many as you want at no cost.

After accepting the obligatory joining email invitation, employees get their own web portal to access personal and shared folders, invite other users to collaborate, set up documents for e-signing and access a personal File Box – a temporary store where incoming file requests are held for 180 days. Clients receive a more basic portal that provides access to folders shared with them, a link to the Files app, options to create workflows and an inbox for received messages and file upload requests.

Files can be sent to people who aren't part of your ShareFile universe by selecting them from the desktop app, Outlook plugin or web portal and providing an email address. The recipient clicks on the link, which redirects them to the cloud-stored file, and portal branding graphics are also placed in the email to add extra authenticity.

Another valuable security feature is that ShareFile scans all files for malware as they're uploaded to its cloud storage repository. Responses to infected files are prompt: after we uploaded malware samples to a shared folder, access to all file actions was blocked and ShareFile alerted us by email in 25 seconds.

Other personal and business cloud storage can be brought into ShareFile using connectors, with tools included for Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. Admins decide which employees can install them and, once registered with a cloud account, the connectors show their contents in the web portal and a "Personal Cloud" folder in the mapped drive so everything can be accessed from one location.

ShareFile supports an extensive range of integrations, with ShareFile's RightSignature service included in the Premium plan. Accessed directly from the user's portal, it opens a new web page for importing documents, adding signatories and emailing them for digitally fingerprinted and legally binding one-click signing.

Microsoft Teams users can get involved by installing the ShareFile app from their client interface. After signing it into a ShareFile user account, it displays private, shared and ShareFile connector folders and provides options to preview, download and create shared web links for selected files.

ShareFile is a great-value choice for SMBs that want secure cloud collaboration with all the storage capacity they can eat. It's easy to use, with great user management tools and support for massive file sizes, with the Premium plan adding a wealth of app integrations including e-signature services.

Designed from the ground up for businesses, Egnyte offers an impressive range of cloud file-sharing services and collaboration tools. SMBs will love its sharp focus on ease of use, while data security gets a big boost as it includes built-in malware and ransomware protection.

Egnyte is available in three plans, with the entry-level Business version on review starting at £16 per month for each user and providing a global 1TB of cloud storage, an extra 10GB for each user and a maximum file size of 100GB. It's easy to set up; after creating an administrator account, we selected a personalised sub-domain name for our business account URL to add that extra touch of professionalism.

The portal provides easy access to all features. From the Settings page, we created new users and decided on their privilege levels. Power users are permitted to engage in all file-sharing activities. In contrast, Standard users are only allowed to upload and download files, edit them and install the Egnyte mobile apps, with a five-pack costing £20.

Invitations are emailed to users so they can set up their account and password. A personal web portal provides access to private and shared folders, with options to upload local files and download cloud files.

When sharing folders, you decide whether users can edit them and add comments or just download and view them. Files can be locked to prevent editing, and a feature that Egnyte offers (and many still don't) is setting permissions at the sub-folder level so only selected users can access them.

The user web portal has links to desktop apps. After installing them on our Windows 10/11 and macOS clients, a new drive was created for quick access. Egnyte is keen to save on local disk space so all user data is initially stored in the cloud but, if you anticipate working offline, you can select folders and sync them to your desktop or mobile beforehand.

Malware protection is enabled by default and scans all files uploaded using any method. It worked perfectly during testing, as malware samples uploaded to cloud folders were automatically quarantined with email alerts received in only 20 seconds.

Egnyte scores highly for its apps and integrations, with support for an incredible range of third-party apps including Microsoft 365 and Teams, Google Workspace, Adobe Sign and many more. The Microsoft Office Desktop add-in allows cloud documents to be edited on the desktop, with extra settings for new Outlook emails provided for sharing files and sending file upload requests.

Businesses that want to provide users in the office with fast access to shared data and continuity if internet access goes down will love Egnyte's Smart Cache hybrid service. Loaded as a VM on a Hyper-V host, it links up with the user's desktop app so when they're in the office it connects their drive letter to its cache, and when they're offsite it connects it to the internet.

The Business plan includes one Smart Cache licence. After installing it on our Hyper-V server, we authorised it with our Egnyte domain, chose the cloud folders we wanted synced and enabled access for specific user groups. Connections are all handled transparently and users can load their desktop app's advanced settings to see which host they're connected to.

Egnyte Business is the perfect collaboration partner for SMBs as it provides a wealth of easily managed file-sharing services. It isn't the best value, but it makes up for this with a terrific range of app integrations, smart hybrid storage services and integral anti-malware controls.

It’s very easy to assume that as a small business owner, once you opt for a renowned cloud service such as Microsoft 365 for email and collaboration tools, your data and business is secure - this isn’t the case.

This eBook shares the importance of establishing your business security needs - particularly when it comes to data laws and compliance - and why you need to keep on top of your security settings in Microsoft 365 with the ever evolving threat landscape.

Download this checklist - aimed at SMBs and MSPs - as it goes through each security setting for Microsoft 365, explaining why you might need them, what the implications are, and recommended configurations.

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Many hybrid working environments have been adopted industry-wide since the global pandemic, with employees using collaboration tools when working from home. IT managers are therefore tasked with, not only the security of internal infrastructure, but also those collaboration solutions on the edge.

This study delves into how employees use collaboration channels, as well as how sensitive information and data is shared via these solutions, and discusses the risks and challenges when it comes to using them.

Download now to learn the risk factors when it comes to collaboration solutions, and why back ups are critical to success.

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I live in Camden Town, in London, close to Regent’s Canal, down which I can walk in ten minutes to King’s Cross. The area around this great railway station used to be squalid and dilapidated but a couple of decades ago renovations began that would turn it into what was briefly dubbed “the Knowledge District”. The British Museum, in Bloomsbury, was close so it moved its famous library to a new building at King’s Cross. Soon followed King’s Place, an avant-garde glass pile containing concert halls, art galleries and the Guardian newspaper. Then came the Francis Crick Institute, a giant spiky armadillo of a building housing Europe’s premier biochemistry labs, and one of the runners in the COVID-19 vaccine race.

Last of all, big tech arrived. Google – sorry, Alphabet – started its new European HQ, which is almost finished as I write, a vast edifice the size of a city block with a whole park on its roof. Facebook – sorry, Meta – pitched in with its own block-sized building, only just open, in that area between the canal and York Way that seems to sprout a new mini-skyscraper every time I walk though its Manhattan-lite main street. DeepMind has a smart office there, as does a Tasmanian craft brewery that dispenses £6 pints from shining steel vats behind its football-pitch-sized bar.

Ten years ago I might have imagined this as a preview of a hi-tech future, but the last year has rapidly clouded any such vision, with mass layoffs and financial concerns. In early autumn, Meta’s share price crashed and the firm is now laying off 11,000 employees; Elon Musk followed up his deranged take-over of Twitter by laying off another 4,000; most cryptocurrencies have been progressively crashing in value. So, what’s happening?

Tech giants are out of touch with the real economy

A recent UK survey investigated public perceptions of various digital product categories. The overwhelming majority (94%) approve of – and use – live streaming, a figure that drops to 63% for instant messaging and 52% for text-to-speech and voice recognition (52%). But approval drops off a cliff for emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), with only 16% approval. A staggering 84% had either never heard of or were bored by the metaverse concept, too, rising to 89% for the nebulous Web3, the cocktail of technologies Zuckerberg has bet his company on.

Behind the iPhones, Oculus Rifts and Alexa smart speakers, there remains a real-world, material economy that makes real things using real people who have real jobs, wages and pensions. The vast wealth that builds these opulent offices comes at a cost to this real world. The smartest minds are deployed to avoid paying the taxes that contribute to its upkeep. Amazon displaces high street shops, Google and Twitter displace local newspapers, Uber displaces taxi drivers, Airbnb displaces hotels, and so on and on. Newness and convenience have so far protected them from public wrath, but the metaverse suddenly becomes a revealing metaphor for the way the owners of these tech giants have detached themselves from the real economy. They can live in a fantasy world where colonising Mars, or the pursuit of physical immortality, can seem like good ways to spend money. Unfortunately for those fantasies, the real world is where silicon chips are made.

For Silicon Valley, reality has come to bite

Along came the COVID-19 pandemic, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a semi-collapse of global supply chains. The USA once had a symbiotic relationship with China in which cheap Chinese labour made cheaper products for the USA, while modernising the Chinese economy and reducing poverty.

That relationship is turning sour, which unfortunately leaves most of the world’s semiconductor fabrication plants within China’s geographic sphere of influence. President Biden hastily tried to shut the stable door by decreeing the building of more fabs in the continental US, with companies such as Intel also committing to ramp up output, but that will take a lot of time and money. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a third whammy, leaving the US tech industry in real trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denying the enormous achievements of the digital giants. The internet, the search engine, the smartphone, video streaming and even cryptocurrencies have changed the world already. Although in many cases basic technologies were paid for by state agencies – universities and military research – no state could ever have achieved the astonishing global infrastructures that sprang out of Silicon Valley.

I’m also not suggesting that merely taxing tech giants more heavily would magically solve our looming economic problems. A massive change of mindset is required to induce cooperation between states and digital giants to deploy this semi-miraculous infrastructure for solving problems on this planet, rather than on Mars or the metaverse. If that doesn’t happen soon, those shiny new office blocks in King’s Cross might end up being renamed the Museum Of Globalisation.

Scotland has a rich history of innovation. Playing a key role in Britain’s industrial revolution, its cities fuelled a range of key industries, from textiles and manufacturing to shipbuilding and finance.

In recent years, Scotland has cast off the spectre of the Silicon Glen failure. At its peak, three-in-ten personal computers in Europe were built in Scottish factories, but when the dot-com bubble burst, so too did Scotland’s electronics manufacturing heyday. Since then, Scotland has established a firm reputation as a thriving technology hub. The country now boasts a burgeoning tech ecosystem populated by a plethora of dynamic startups spanning areas such as FinTech, cyber security, MedTech and data science.

More than 850 high-growth tech companies operate in Scotland, as of last year, according to Beahurst. The majority of these are based in Edinburgh, but that isn’t to say the city is the epicentre of the Scottish tech ecosystem.

Glasgow, with its rich industrial heritage, is fast becoming an ideal destination, with firms such as JP Morgan and Barclays establishing tech hubs in the city. Last year, Glasgow-based firms raised a combined £100 million in venture capital investment, more than double raised in 2020. Aberdeen, meanwhile, continues to draw on its traditional strengths in energy as the industry looks to transform its digital capabilities, prepare for the energy transition and capitalise on the renewables boom.

Collaboration is boosting Scottish FinTech

Key to Scottish tech's ongoing success is its well-established culture of collaboration, which appears finely woven into the fabric of the ecosystem. Industry, government, and academia are all intricately linked – with the latter providing a vital talent pipeline fuelling the growing demand of the former. This is a similar framework to that which is powering Northern Ireland's cyber security scene.

Scotland’s academic institutions also do more than just supply talent for the tech sector, however. Increasingly, they provide a nurturing environment for founders and entrepreneurs to build new companies. Figures from the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service, for example, revealed 100 startups spun out between September 2021 and 2022 – marking a significant increase against previous years.

The collaborative mindset embedded within the Scottish tech ecosystem is perhaps best exemplified by the FinTech sector, which has grown rapidly over the last five years. Recent figures from FinTech Scotland – the cluster organisation which represents the sector – show Scottish FinTech SMBs raised more than £305 million in funding across 2022. This is in addition to a 13% year-on-year increase in the number of SMBs. Much of the investment here focused on SMBs specialising in payment and data innovation, regulatory technology and wealth management solutions.

Underpinning this growth is the sector’s close relationship with Scotland’s financial services sector, which hosts the second-largest cluster in the UK behind London and is home to organisations such as NatWest Group, JP Morgan, Barclays, and Lloyds Banking Group.

This direct link to financial services incumbents has enabled both industries to draw on combined strengths and provide tangible benefits to consumers and businesses alike, Nicola Anderson, FinTech Scotland CEO, tells IT Pro.

Glasgow-based firms raised a combined £100 million last year

“The majority of FinTechs [in Scotland] are building B2B propositions,” she says. “And so, building on the experience of financial services, their route to market is through those incumbents. It’s a big focus for us at FinTech Scotland; bringing the incumbents and the innovators closer together. The culture within those large organisations to want to develop partnerships is certainly progressing, and that’s helping startups.”

“Innovation calls” – whereby incumbents engage with the FinTech ecosystem to form partnerships and develop new product – also play a key role in cementing this relationship and culture of shared expertise, Anderson adds. Last year, Lloyds, Phoenix Group and TSB all ran innovation calls to work alongside FinTech entrepreneurs and startups operating in the ecosystem – and this has proven highly beneficial.

InBest, for example, partnered with NatWest to develop a cost of living tool that lets customers track spending. Similarly, payments platform BR-DGE recently announced a partnership with Visa to provide payment solutions using the firm's services.

“That’s one example of the type of culture that’s starting to emerge in Scottish FinTech,” Anderson says. “There’s a real transparency [from financial services incumbents] over the kind of challenges they’re facing, and there’s a real appetite to create opportunities for young businesses.”

Techscalers are bringing people together

While recent successes are worth highlighting, the Scottish tech sector has experienced acute challenges – and two recurring themes have traditionally been accessing venture capital investment and talent retention.

Lack of investment is an issue that has permeated virtually every vertical within the Scottish tech sector. So much so that it was identified as a key hurdle for future industry success in the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, authored by former Skyscanner executive Mark Logan.

This is where the Scottish Government comes in. Acting on recommendations outlined in the Logan Review, Holyrood has embarked on an ambitious campaign to further develop the infrastructure underpinning Scottish tech.

A £42 million investment in a series of ‘Techscaler Hubs’ – incubators aimed at nurturing early-stage startups and small businesses – is a key part of this push. Logan believes the scheme provides a great opportunity for industry and government to collaborate to support growth and achieve shared long-term goals.

“It’s a statement of intent about the level of collaboration that people recognise is required to build a strong tech sector in Scotland that can adapt to the changing world we find ourselves in," he tells IT Pro. “It really needs education, government, and it needs the industry to share the same view and vision of what we’re trying to achieve and make mutually reinforcing interventions into the ecosystem that strengthen each other's activities.”

Crucially, Logan explains, this is about creating a more integrated and aligned tech ecosystem which lets businesses flourish by drawing on shared expertise and industry best-practice from ecosystems elsewhere. In previous years, Logan says this level of integration simply hasn’t been there for founders and startups operating in the sector, with different stakeholders making different but well-intentioned interventions across the ecosystem. Although this has gradually improved, the Techscalers could prove vital to accelerate this process and help Scottish tech reach its ‘tipping point’.

The Scottish Government has bid to improve tech infrastructure by commissioning the Logan Review

"Because we weren’t viewing it as a ‘system’ with inputs and outputs that we should be optimising for, and mechanisms that we can improve, it was harder to talk with the same terminology or discuss how we could reinforce each other’s activities," he adds. “Whereas now we have essentially a shared model of how that system broadly works, and what interventions are viable to increase the output.”

In this context, Logan says, the ‘output’ of Scottish tech is the number of companies that naturally scale, increasing the rate, and shortening the time it takes to get there. It's a problem that’s been discussed at length in the ecosystem, and one inexorably linked to the lingering issue of investment. Logan is keen to emphasise “not every company in Scotland should become a unicorn”, but every company should at least be able to reach the same natural scaling stage as it might have done in a larger, more mature ecosystem.

Stephen Coleman OBE, co-founder of CodeBase, echoes Logan’s comments on the Scottish Government’s commitment to supporting the tech sector, adding the hubs will create an open environment where founders and entrepreneurs can innovate at their own pace.

“The £42 million investment in the Techscaler programme, and the programme’s designation as a primary strategic goal, evidence not only the Scottish Government’s support for the industry, but an ongoing commitment to the tech startup community,” he says. “Education, community, mentorship, and workspace are the key support pillars of Techscaler. Together, they create the environment and conditions for founders and would-be founders to scale.

Members can access educational playbooks and resources, and enrol in courses, he continues. Seven hubs across Scotland provide flexible physical space for members to meet and work together, while an online community offers an accessible space for people in startups to share knowledge, collaborate on ideas, and gather around challenges. Long-term, Coleman suggests these hubs will adapt to the changing needs of the tech community and create greater alignment between industry and government

“Listening to members, recognising and accommodating different needs, and gathering community feedback is central to how CodeBase delivers the programme,” he adds. “This creates an inclusive, nurturing environment, and allows for a data-led approach, helping us uncover what interventions and programmes are most effective for startups at each stage of the journey.”

Uncovering fresh investment opportunities

Although Scotland has traditionally struggled to attract levels of investment comparable to other regional ecosystems in the UK, funding levels have steadily improved. KPMG research reveals high-growth Scottish scale-ups raised an impressive £705 million in venture capital across 2022 – eclipsing the previous record of £626 million in 2021. Bucking both global and UK-wide investment trends, these businesses also continued to perform despite economic disruption in the wake of COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis.

This performance should be acknowledged as a highly positive step for Scotland's tech sector given the circumstances, says Amy Burnett, KPMG’s senior manager for private investment in Scotland.

“Whilst we all love a hockey stick [graph] there are going to be bumps in the road, and we’ve all been impacted last year by the cost of living crisis, what’s happening with Ukraine and the shift in consumer spending,” Burnett says. “I think we’ve got to be mindful of that overall. However, Scotland has done okay up until Q3. Yes, investment cooled over the summer. And yes, we see it being cooler in Q4. But overall, we think it’s actually going to be quite a positive year for Scotland.”

Notably, Burnett says recent VC activity in Scotland – both from internal and external stakeholders – showcases the fact the industry is becoming an increasingly attractive proposition. It will also act to widen the range of funding options available for startups and scale-ups, she says. In recent years, Scotland has performed well with regard to angel investment and seed funding. Although, as the Logan Review highlights, options for Series A funding and beyond have proven difficult, Burnett reveals KPMG has observed a broader spread of funding options.

“It’s getting better. It’s still not great, but we’ve got a small community of VCs up here which is brilliant. But we know there’s a lot of dry powder out there that’s not being deployed – or could be deployed,” she says. “And that’s not just in Scotland, but across regions to support growth there. I’m excited to see the impact Techscalers makes for our Scottish scale-ups, by creating really brilliant, investible companies.”

Scottish startups are fighting for skills

Looking ahead, talent is expected to be a key challenge amidst an increasingly competitive landscape. This was another notable hurdle identified in the Logan Review, which the government has sought to remedy.

Logan says a key objective in addressing this problem will be to put in place a programme that puts computer science on par with maths, or the school curriculum. "If you put this in a systems context and say if we want to have more tech companies in the future, then we’ve got to make sure we’re seeding the talent pool now,” he says.

While government support is welcomed and could address long-term challenges, in the immediate future this might not be enough to plug critical talent gaps, according to CodeClan chief executive Loral Quinn. Quinn believes training organisations will play a crucial role in bringing talent into the tech ecosystem and help close gaps in key areas. CodeClan is Scotland’s first SQA accredited digital skills academy, and to date has helped hundreds of people upskill and re-skill to pursue careers in the industry.

“In Scotland, we’ve seen some positive movement regarding new talent coming into the industry, but growth across the tech sector has meant that supply still falls significantly short of demand,” Quinn says. “Around 13,000 digital technology jobs are created in Scotland every year, and there continues to be a gap between the number of job opportunities and the number of college and university leavers, apprentices and career changers that enter the market with relevant skills."

Quinn admits that medium and long-term policies “are essential” to inspire young people to take up computer science in schools, colleges and universities. However, lingering short-term challenges also need to be tackled with intensity. “The infrastructure is here,” she says. “What’s needed now is investment and scale to give us the reach we need to drive a talent pipeline that’s diverse enough for our needs.”

Microsoft has revealed the features that will remain exclusive to the upcoming Microsoft Teams Premium - a more expensive subscription for its flagship collaboration platform.

The tech giant first revealed plans for Teams Premium in October 2022, and since mid-December, the product has been available for preview as a “limited trial for commercial customers”.

Now, Microsoft has revealed what features will only be available on the more expensive subscription tier. They will remain accessible for 30 days after Premium's launch to all users but after that will be close doff only to Premium users.

Speaking in October, Microsoft Teams VP Nicole Herskowitz said the Teams Premium push is part of a broader strategy to deliver “more personalised, intelligent, and secure” meetings and improve synergy across products.

“Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaboration experience of Microsoft Teams, this new offering makes every meeting from one-on-ones to large meetings, to virtual appointments to webinars more personalised, intelligent, and secure,” she said.

“Unlike the disconnected experience and costs of multiple point products or add-ons, with Teams Premium you get everything you need for just one low price.”

Teams Premium features – what can customers expect?

According to Microsoft, the Teams Premium platform will provide users with a raft of intuitive new tools and features.

But be warned, this will see “some Teams features” move from the regular licence to the new product, meaning that users will likely be nudged towards upgrading to access certain functionalities.

AI-supported productivity

A key feature highlighted by Microsoft includes the ability for organisations to extend their “brand and company culture across meetings” with customised branding and backgrounds, as well as more customisable Together mode scenes.

The premium platform will also make use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve productivity in meetings.

Features benefitting from AI will include real-time translation for captions in up to 40 spoken languages, intelligent recap features that offer “smarter recordings”, and auto-generated chapters for meetings.

“Intelligent recap uses AI to suggest action items and owners so that follow-ups are not missed,” Microsoft said. “It’s like having a virtual assistant attend every meeting.”

Intelligent recap works by capturing recordings from a meeting where a user’s name was mentioned, a screen was shared or when a specific user left a meeting early.

Better webinar experiences

Webinar capabilities will be granted a major boost as part of the Teams Premium upgrade, allowing users “streamline event workflows” with the inclusion of manual approval for registrants and the creation of waiting lists.

This will also see the launch of a virtual ‘green room’ for events where presenters and participants can meet before a webinar goes live.

Webinar admins will also have greater control over shared content and what participants can see on screen.

Advanced meeting protection

Teams Premium users will now be able to apply “advanced” meeting protections such as watermarks and sensitivity labels for meetings.

The latter of these features, Microsoft revealed, will prevent copying and pasting of meeting chat text to improve security. Similarly, Microsoft 365 E5 customers can use existing Microsoft Purview Information Protection tools to automatically apply labels to relevant meetings.

End-to-end encryption for meetings containing more than 50 users will also be made available, the firm revealed.

Virtual appointment improvements

Microsoft’s virtual appointments feature, which it views as a key tool for businesses engaging with clients, is also expected to see a number of improvements.

With Teams Premium the tech giant hopes to “facilitate a seamless customer experience” by providing customers with text reminders for meetings and bespoke-branded virtual appointments without downloading the app itself.

Schedulers will also have access to advanced appointment queueing capabilities and a centralised virtual appointment dashboard offering a quick view into schedules, queues, and analytics to monitor and track no-shows and waiting times.

Pricing

Microsoft said the “expected price” for Teams Premium is currently set at $10 per profile each month.

“Official pricing will be shared once Teams Premium is available to the public in February,” the company said.

Google Docs users will soon be able to seamlessly paste code into their documents, with the addition of ‘code blocks’ to the text editor’s smart canvas range of tools.

Through the new feature, users will be able to paste code to industry standards in a range of programming languages. Currently, the blocks support C/C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python.

The feature could prove useful for teams of developers, particularly those who have to regularly share their code with colleagues, either in a presentation setting or over video conferencing.

Before now, users seeking to paste code into Google Docs had limited options. It is possible to manually format code in Docs, as users who have set their documents to automatically detect text markup can type ``` and press ‘enter’ to manually type code (or paste it in with no formatting), and there are a number of third-party extensions and add-ons to perform this function.

However, manual editing can prove tricky and not a consistent process across even the most popular languages as it requires manual indentation and colouration of text that even a programmer may have to double-check, as this is performed automatically in any integrated developer environment (IDE).

Furthermore, employees using a company-issued laptop may not be able to add extensions to their Google Workspace; third-party add-ons could be viewed with suspicion by administrators.

Once rolled out, users can access the feature by selecting Insert then Building Blocks then Code Block. With an integrated solution for the problem, businesses will no longer have to rely on third-party solutions, and can benefit from future updates to the feature down the line such as the addition of more programming languages.

In a blog post on the new feature, Google noted that it will only be available for those with “Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus customers, and Nonprofit” accounts.

This means that at present, there are no plans to provide it to users with the cheaper business, enterprise, and educational accounts, nor for legacy and personal accounts.

Building blocks were added as part of a wider suite of features added over the course of 2022, as the firm looked to bulk up the features of its smart canvas. These included the addition of more integrated tools with ‘@-mentions’, including a new email draft template to allow for collaborative crafting of important messages, as well as a chip for importing notes from a meeting within a user’s Google calendar.

Organisations that have their Google accounts signed up for Rapid Release, the company’s fast track programme for new features, will receive the update between 14 December and 29 December.

However, as Rapid Release can lessen the ability for organisation administrators to oversee new features before they are rolled out to their workforce, many businesses operate on Google’s Scheduled Release track, which typically lags behind Rapid Release by around one week.

For those in this category, Google has pencilled in 3 January as the release date, though has noted that it could take until 18 January until all users can access the feature.

IT Pro has approached Google for comment.

In the last few years the way we work and collaborate has changed forever. The boom in hybrid and remote working means that teams frequently have to collaborate over vast distances. For some small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this may even have meant abandoning the office altogether. In the face of global disruption and changing ways of working, open lines of communication are even more vital than they have ever been.

Cloud-based tools have stepped in to enable clear communication and remote access in these changing circumstances. However, unplanned adoption and the use of too many disconnected systems can lead to a complex knot of services that can end up causing chaos rather than preventing it.

A solution to this chaos is to adopt a unified communications and IT support solution, such as GoTo Essentials, to ensure that business communications are occurring on one platform where all employees can be found, the various features your business needs are compatible, and important messages don’t go astray.

The benefits of consolidation

With all the possible communications tools in play today, you’ve likely had a moment of confusion in which you’ve realised that you’ve been neglecting one particular tool or channel, or realised that you don’t know how to log into the particular service being used for a meeting that’s started already. As for IT teams, they have to deal with the complicated tech stack with multiple points of failure that results, as well as having to juggle multiple providers.

A crucial requirement of effective communications and IT support systems is that they are simple to understand and use. A unified comms and IT support platform puts everything in one place, so that everyone knows where to go for all their communication and collaboration tools. It gives your business the opportunity to work with one trusted vendor, so that you can be sure that you will receive the level of support and security you need at all times.

This clarity and connectivity will extend to your clients, consumers, suppliers and any external IT support, making sure that you can work closely with them to ensure that all parties are communicating with each other and delivering what the other needs. Combining phone, meeting and messaging capabilities with an all-in-one IT support and management into one simple and reliable service can mean the difference between a well-connected company and costly confusion.

Speaking of costs, adopting a unified system can help you to gain control of spiralling expenses. Employing a host of apps and services means you’ll likely end up paying more for tools you don’t need, which can be a particular issue for SMBs trying to keep costs down in a time of economic uncertainty where every penny counts. Sudden changes in costs can come as a nasty surprise, or even go unnoticed if your web of services is too complicated.

A unified communications and IT support system from a single vendor means one fee. It becomes much easier to monitor and control your costs, and you’ll also likely end up paying less overall.

GoTo Essentials combines the GoTo Connect business communications software and GoTo Resolve IT and management software into one convenient bundle with all the features you need to keep your colleagues in touch and IT support running smoothly. GoTo Essentials includes advanced security and a 24/7 helpline, providing support and advice whenever you need it, and is available for one affordable fee.

With a unified comms and IT support solution, you can cut through the confusion and expense of using multiple services to make sure that your business is working together as smoothly and efficiently as possible, wherever your employees are based.

Learn more about GoTo Essentials

“Businesses will look to adopt VR headsets rather than replacing their laptops.”

“What?”

Steve Hatch, Meta’s VP for Northern Europe had just uttered one of the boldest claims about the metaverse so far. I was eyeing another sausage roll from the buffet table at the time so, at first, I thought I had misheard him. I was at Meta’s King’s Cross office with a cohort of other journalists and analysts, hoping to catch a first glimpse of the new Meta Quest Pro headset, and the even newer Horizon Workrooms app – it was a physical media event but we were about to return to the metaverse.

The rise of Meta (née Facebook) is as ballsy a business transformation as there has ever been; billions of dollars have been spent, some 11,000 jobs have been lost, and the name of one of the world’s most influential organisations has been changed – a gambit like no other. Yet, it was the idea of headsets replacing the trusty laptop that made me do a double-take.

Countless questions flooded my mind. For instance, don’t you need the laptop to use alongside the headset? It was hard to rein in my BS detector. At that point, however, I hadn’t actually tried Meta’s new headset, or seen Horizon Workrooms. In fact I hadn’t actually experienced any Horizon applications before. I had nothing to really counter this claim with.

Of course, the claim resurfaced again and again. It was even repeated in Meta’s Future of Work report. It was even backed up with two key stats: the first is that 60% of employees want to see VR headsets in the office by 2024, and the second was that 62% want avatars and virtual collaboration spaces.

The report, which is based on a survey of 2,000 employees and 400 business leaders across the UK and the US, is nowhere near enough people to highlight the global interest in such a risky technology. Meta also consulted experts within, and beyond, the company to define the future of work and, is it any surprise that people who work closely with the firm would highlight the metaverse as a key area.

Nevertheless, in a short space of time, the metaverse has become the tech industry’s buzziest buzzword. Perhaps it highlights the influence of Mark Zuckerberg, who has pushed this concept into the global lexicon. Now, seemingly all companies want to be operating in this three-dimensional version of the internet. The seriousness of the pitch is underlined by a softer approach, however, as it’s no longer “move fast and break things”. Instead the company is going slowly, predicting it will take years for its vision to come to fruition, also stressing that it won't be one organisation that builds this idea – but many.

Hands-on with the Meta Quest Pro

Meta has such faith in the VR headset that it believes these will be prioritised over laptops in the enterprise space. The product that’s given them this confidence is the Meta Quest Pro, which IT Pro was invited to test. Fellow journalists and analysts were split into groups of four and taken into separate rooms where a Meta hardware specialist ran through housekeeping rules. A headset rested in front of each person sitting at the table.

On first impression, the Quest Pro looks sleek. It’s all-black and feels smooth and cool to the touch. The front section is massive, covering both your eyes and most of your forehead. The headset is also, admittedly, a little heavy. To get the best visual, I found it needed to sit higher on the head, so most of your nose was poking out, although the lenses are adjustable if you need them closer together or further apart.

Initially it’s comfortable; it’s well padded and it can be tightened with a handy dial at the back. You don’t ever lose the feeling of having a headset on, though, in a similar way to wearing a helmet. After ten minutes, or so, t does become a bit of a burden. Much later, while walking to the tube station, I chose not to put in my earbuds because I could still feel the headset’s lingering presence.

The Quest Pro is meant to be used untethered, and it comes with two hand-held devices. These look and feel like the handles of fighter planes, with little buttons and joysticks on the top, but there’s also a stylus tip poking out from the bottom so you can doodle on a virtual whiteboard.

With our headsets on, we entered the metaverse or, more specifically, the new Horizon Workrooms platform. The app is still full of cartoonish avatars that don’t have any legs or much business appeal, but the way it works – the actual user experience (UX) and the controls – is very impressive. Without the controls in your hand, you can operate your virtual dashboard by simply pinching your thumb and forefinger. There’s also a beam of light that shoots out of your virtual hand, like Iron Man on battery-saver mode, that you use to select where to sit or change settings.

Other participants appear across tables or rooms, and those without headsets can be accommodated – appearing as a tile like in classic video conferencing. People, oddly, have presence in the virtual world; we all did a little ‘high-five’ test and I felt like the person next to me was next to me in real life, even though they were physically much further away. I could also hear the warm brummie accent of IT Pro freelancer Mark Samuels, although I was 100% sure he wasn’t in my room. Engagement, quality UX, spine-tinglingly cool – Horizon Workrooms ticks all those boxes.

Who will own the metaverse?

Despite the intriguing overall experience, I wasn’t totally impressed with the headset, but I am reluctant to leave it with a negative review, as it’s still an idea in its infancy. Other companies are producing more attractive wearables in the augmented reality (AR) space, such as Lenovo, with headsets likely to become more streamlined in the form of smart glasses. Many are even holding out hope that smart lenses will kick these concepts into the mainstream. Regardless, Meta remains front and centre. As for whether the metaverse will take off, from a business perspective, that’s still hard to see. Cartoon avatars are a little too silly, and entering this world represents far more effort than simply logging onto a video call with your… laptop.

It will be interesting to see where Microsoft goes with regards to the metaverse. CCS Insight chief analyst Ben Wood, also in attendance, pointed out something to me that, admittedly, softened my stance on working in the metaverse. Microsoft is meant to be a competing company (have we all forgotten Hololens?), yet it’s partnered with Meta to bring Mesh for Microsoft Teams into the metaverse. Essentially, the Quest Pro and Horizon could just be another vehicle through which people can access Microsoft Office, Wood suggests.

Admittedly, the Quest Pro has its faults, and the hardware component of the metaverse is still in need of a definitive final form. Meta might very well tank its business before its laptop predictions can be proven right, but the ideas are starting to stick.

A third of employees are planning to be online and ready to work during the holiday period even if they have the time off.

This is despite 83% of UK bosses encouraging their employees to switch off during the holidays, according to a survey of 2,000 UK office workers by Slack and YouGov. The survey explored how the incoming recession is affecting employees’ ability to switch off and if they feel pressured to always be available.

Around 36% of employees who are available to work said they will check in on 24 December, with 19% planning to check work messages on 26 December, followed by 10% on 25 December, the survey found.

Only 33% of workers said their employer helps them to switch off during their holidays. Slack and YouGov suggested technology plays a role here, since 72% of employees believe having a good digital infrastructure helps to show they’re on holiday and shouldn’t be disturbed. Around 65% of employees plan to turn off their notifications for the holiday period, with 48% planning to leave a status to set expectations on when they can work.

“Technology has enabled employees to work faster and smarter in a hybrid working world, but it’s vital that employees know they can switch off during the Christmas break and are empowered to do so,” said Chris Mills, head of customer success for EMEA at Slack.

The survey also found that 38% of bosses don’t expect their employees to work over the holidays, whether that’s viewing messages or emails. However, 53% of employees who are available to work despite having the time off said they feel compelled to check in.

The two companies said that expectations need to be clearer on work over the holiday period, especially since 49% of employees and 50% of bosses worry that the pressure to always be available for work will lead to burnout.

Just over half of those surveyed also said they choose to work at a company with flexible digital infrastructure and holiday policies, which helps them choose to when and how they work.

Working from home during the pandemic saw unions urge the government to legislate a “right to disconnect” policy in April 2021. Prospect hoped that the legal requirement would force companies to discuss when they can contact employees working from home.

If this was made legal, it would mean employees wouldn’t have to take work-related calls or emails during their time off. The think tank Autonomy also called for the right to switch off in August 2021, underlining it was needed to develop a healthy work-life balance so workers can enjoy their leisure time.

Twitter is now under investigation by San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspections after it was revealed that offices in the company’s headquarters have been converted into bedrooms.

Employees who work out of the Twitter San Francisco office reportedly found on Monday that conference rooms throughout the office had been converted into rudimentary bedrooms, complete with double beds, wardrobes, and side tables.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Twitter does not have permission to use the headquarters for residential use, which the addition of bedrooms could constitute. The investigation is ongoing, and employees have already shared photos of the sleeping arrangements.

In response to news of the investigation, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was “providing beds for tired employees”, and linked a news story of a child who died after allegedly coming into contact with fentanyl in a playground, criticising the priorities of the San Francisco local government.

Later, Musk replied with ‘crying laughing’ emojis to a tweet joking that Twitter has accomplished in building new housing where city officials have not.

"Beds in offices are not unusual, with law firms and financial institutions known to provide sleeping facilities for their staff," Kevin Poulter, employment partner at Freeths told IT Pro.

"What's important is the purpose of the beds and whether employees are expected to stay in the workplace to be 'on call' or if they are provided for a nap between meetings, or for those who might be jet-lagged after a long trip. Workers in the UK and across Europe are protected by the Working Time Directive, which places limits not only on the amount of time an employee can work each week, but also strict rules around breaks during the working day and between weekly periods of work.

"This is aside from any health and safety and real estate regulations which might apply. Making beds available to employees could also lead to unwanted sexual conduct, which might not otherwise be facilitated."

Some employees have registered their surprise with the change, even as they had become used to the longer than usual working hours and weekly code reviews that has become part and parcel of Musk's strategy for the company.

“It’s not a good look,” a source within the company told Forbes.

“It’s yet another unspoken sign of disrespect. There is no discussion. Just like, beds showed up.”

The introduction of basic sleeping quarters to the Twitter office appears to be linked to Musk’s former demand that Twitter employees must adjust to an “extremely hardcore” new office culture, with massive cuts to staff benefits like remote work, and accepting long hours in the office. Employees were given a deadline by which they had to agree to the changes, or leave their role.

Hundreds of employees refused the demands, and left the company as a result, leaving the future of the platform uncertain. This was one of a number of controversial changes to Twitter, both internal and on the platform itself, since he acquired it at the end of October. One of the first moves he made in the role of CEO was to fire many of the company’s remaining executives, and he then cut half of the company’s employees.

Following the layoffs, the company has been sued by a number of employees who allege that they were not given adequate notice of the decision.

Akiva Cohen, a lawyer representing a number of former employees, tweeted the full text of the demand letter he sent to Musk, which stated that the “one month of salary, no bonus, no accelerated vest, and no contribution to healthcare” offered to fired employees falls “far, far short” of what they were promised.

Additionally, Musk’s introduction of paid verification, intended to improve ‘free speech’ amongst users, instead gave rise to chaotic impersonations of famous individuals and companies alike.

Firms such as aerospace and arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin lost billions in market cap as a result of the fake accounts, and Twitter is now planning to introduce colour-coded verification badges for businesses, governments, and individual users.

The UK and Japan have unveiled a new digital partnership which will see the pair collaborate on a range of digital technologies.

Announced on Wednesday, the partnership aims to deliver on the UK’s plan to increase international collaboration with technology.

It’s set to cover a range of digital issues, including how to improve the resilience of global supply chains, such as with semiconductors, as well as developing research and development projects to share expertise.

The countries are set to promote initiatives to standardise IoT security as well as address the risks of digital services in supply chains. They are also hoping to align their approaches to digital regulation to try and make it easier for organisations to operate in each territory.

It will also see collaboration between the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) - the UK’s data regulator - and Japanese regulators to help businesses and citizens trust data sharing more between the two countries.

“The UK’s relationship with Japan has grown from strength to strength in recent years based on a foundation of shared goals and values,” said UK digital secretary Michelle Donelan. “Our thriving tech sectors are another opportunity for us to work together to benefit citizens and businesses across both countries. I look forward to deepening our relationship through the UK-Japan digital partnership in the future.”

The partnership also will see the creation of a UK-Japan Digital Council. It will take the format of an annual meeting between representatives from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) and Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and the Digital Agency. In the meeting, the officials will discuss new priorities for both countries.

The collaboration also accomplishes the UK’s goal of becoming the European nation with the biggest presence in the Indo-Pacific region, said the government. This part of the world has become more and more important as global tech competition has intensified.

Japan and the UK signed a post-Brexit trade deal in September 2020 which allowed the free flow of data between the nations. The government estimated that it would increase trade with Japan by around £15.2 billion.

It also included a ban on data localisation, meaning that UK companies can operate in Japan without having to have a data residency or local server in the country.

Metaverse technology: although it still hasn’t found its feet, it’s the headline-grabbing area of development that has seen massive investment in just the past few years. Meta has spent over $15 billion on the tech through its Reality Labs division, and Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, and more have all begun development using variations on metaverse tech.

But like any new technology, metaverse tech will also usher in new security risks, from innovative threat actors and existing vulnerabilities inherited by building this new frontier on legacy architecture.

This week, we spoke to Rick McElroy, Principal Cyber Security Strategist at VMware, about the opportunities and challenges metaverse tech, and what we can do while it’s still in its infancy.

Highlights

“The cool part of all of it is, we actually get to design it. Right? Like, we're humans, we're now working on some in the future. And so we do get to look at the past, have those design considerations? And then really move forward with like, how can we start to fundamentally get rid of some of these things from the beginning, because we know that they're going to happen, right? And so I hope the opportunity is exciting for folks that are working on those projects.”

“I can tell you, I've talked to no CISOs over the last 18 months where it's at the top of their project list. Generally speaking, ransomware is still at the top of that list. Again, the security fundamentals of being able to patch as quickly as possible, and then of course, recover from some types of these attacks.”

“We're not writing a new internet protocol for the metaverse, it's going to be IPv6 and IPv4. Generally speaking, it'll be IPv6, because it's a lot of new companies that are adopting it. Manipulation of that TCP/IP stack is still real, those threats exist all the time, adversaries take advantage.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• What is Web3 and will it revolutionise the internet again?
• Microsoft signs $22bn deal to supply US Army with HoloLens devices
• Apple's mixed reality headset could debut in 2022
• Why AR, not VR, is the next big thing in business
• Meta's earnings are 'cause for concern' and 2023 looks even bleaker
• The future of virtual assistants might lie in the metaverse
• Did the Pentagon really ban Furbys?
• What is metaverse security?
• How to protect your endpoints
• If not passwords then what?
• What is TCP/IP?
• Whatever happened to IPv6?
• What is zero trust?
• What is GDPR? Everything you need to know, from requirements to fines
• What is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)?
• Understanding PCI compliance: The role of the channel
• What is Wi-Fi 7?
• US unveils next-gen encryption tools to withstand quantum computing attacks
• Seven steps to keeping metaverse meetings safe and secure
• Meta deepens metaverse partnership with Microsoft and Accenture, still lacks compelling business case
• Immersive tech can be more than just a gimmick
• Siemens and Nvidia partner on industrial metaverse concept
• Into the metaverse: Everything we learned from our virtual tour
• The metaverse is a waste of time, effort and processing power

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This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘How secure is metaverse tech?’ We apologise for any errors.

Rory Bathgate

Hi, I’m Rory Bathgate. And you’re listening to the IT Pro Podcast, where this week we’re considering the risks and rewards of metaverse technology. In just the past few years alone, metaverse technology has seen massive growth and investment. Facebook retooled itself as Meta last year, and the company has subsequently spent over $15 billion on the tech through its Reality Labs division. Meanwhile, other big names in tech such as Microsoft and Nvidia have announced forays into metaverse tech themselves, and McKinsey says that in all, over $120bn was spent on metaverse tech in the first five months of 2022. But like with all innovations in the tech industry, metaverse tech carries the potential to bring many vulnerabilities along with its proposed benefits, with existing vulnerabilities carried across to this new frontier along with the potential for novel threats that make use of metaverse technology also becoming an issue. This week, we’re speaking to Rick McElroy, Principal Cyber Security Strategist at VMware, about the challenges posed by metaverse tech, and what can be done to address these while it’s still in its infancy. Rick, thanks so much for being on the show.

Rick McElroy

Hey, thanks for having me.

Rory

So just to start off with, what do you see as the main business use cases for Metaverse technology?

Rick

Oh, that's interesting. I personally, think about the cost savings of sending humans like myself all over the globe, to whether that's facilitation of a meeting, audit, controls some sort of incident response engagement, there is a huge cost to transporting humans all over the globe to do their job, right. There's a huge cost to educate those humans. You just got back from VMware Explorer. And I think certainly organisations have explored something like virtualized conferences during the pandemic. And then I would say, as that starts to mature, as it starts to become more real, I do expect organisations to, to achieve some cost savings by being able to bring together people remotely in these types of areas. I certainly think I'm in the education space. This is a huge area where you can have virtualized universities where there's better connection than we do from an online university perspective. And so I do think, you know, some of those verticals are exploring those areas today.

Rory

Fantastic. So you mainly see it as one of many tools to bring into the workplace, not necessarily radically changing how offices work in any way, potentially, but maybe for specific use cases, such as in education and in conferencing?

Rick

I think potentially, in the end. But if you look at what happened over the pandemic, so the realism of having to send employees home caused a lot of organisations to have to change technologies change process, do all of these things. Well, we're back on the other side. And some companies have decided to start to bring people back to offices. And so it is a long tail, especially inside of organisations to adopt technology. When you look at certain verticals, certainly the federal vertical, the state and local verticals and municipalities and governments, they're just a little slower to bring that tech in, right? And so I know, meta, and all the good folks are instantly gonna see some consumer adoption. But I think in organisations, there'll be a vetting period.

Rory

That's interesting that there might be a public private, delayed adoption. I mean, of course, that's something that we see across the tech sector. But it's interesting that you mentioned that. So assuming that metaverse technology does really take off in a big way, and certainly a lot of really large tech firms like Microsoft, Apple, of course, Meta. They all seem to think it will. What are some of the immediate cyber security concerns that it will raise?

Rick

Well, I think the first one for me is we're building a bunch of new tech on top of old technology. So if you look at the back end of what's being built, it's still sitting on top of Linux servers with containers, which we fundamentally know are insecure based on lots of threat analysis, and lots of consulting with companies. And then of course, watching what the attackers are doing, right? So my first concern is, with any new technology, not building that with the misuse cases in mind, as a rush to market generally becomes, I think, concerning from a security and risk perspective. And so, I think having some thoughtfulness as we start to deliver some of this new technology specific areas that I think about: we haven't quite nailed identity yet, and misuse of identity. So those are key areas that I think if we dragged relying on passwords into the metaverse, that's probably a path that we know. It's a recipe towards breaches and towards some of that disastrous results. But I think if we're thoughtful about things like identities, if we're thoughtful about controls that we put in place to help identify folks, so that they can't run scams or report some of the misinformation that we see from other platforms, those types of things, great. But I think we're moving a little faster than then I think the security and privacy community's comfortable with.

Rory

Yeah, I mean, you know, you're a cybersecurity expert yourself. I think there are a lot of cybersecurity experts right now who are shaking their heads going. No, we've, you know, we want to move away from the whole password headache and towards something more more secure something, you know, this is a software error. This is a technology in its infancy, maybe we can design something from the ground up, you know, is properly secured by design. On that note, there's been talk I know around continuous digital authentication, and the role that that can play in the metaverse or in metaverse tech, I should say. So, could you talk a bit about that? For those who don't know, could you lay out what it is in brief and how it could help in this role?

Rick

Yeah, absolutely. The idea of a continual, you know, authentication strategy. Most people are familiar with a one time authentication, I go to a website, I need a service, it has a login, I use a username and password, good to go, right? Continual auth moves towards using factors to continually authenticate the device, the identity of the human that's on the device. And then of course, other factors, one of which will probably be biometrics as we start to look towards that future with Meta. But I think the intrinsic risk is really, you know, this idea of to actually get to a place where you can use continual auth on an identification, it butts up against privacy. Right, so for nations that are concerning, and certainly citizens that are concerned about privacy, as we start to gather this data, it clearly butts up against the line of privacy. And I think for some of the organisations that are involved in the build out of the metaverse, or whatever we wind up adopting as that nomenclature in the future, hey've shown that they haven't been good shepherds of privacy today. And so I think them having some transparency and addressing their current issues would help alleviate some of the concerns in the future.

Rory

That's interesting. And on that point of the nomenclature, I think, certainly right now there is a tendency to talk about the metaverse, which is often I guess, just by name association, and by the amount of money that they've poured into it already associated with Reality Labs, other researchers at Meta, and with Meta itself. Do you think that we need to be having conversations right now around maybe broadening the term out and not letting it fall into the hands of a very choice few players and maybe broadening the technology out in its infancy?

Rick

Well, I mean, I certainly think it's brilliant. I will credit that. I mean, it's pretty brilliant, what they did. Um, that being said look Apple is, you know, currently developing their technology and platforms. So I have a feeling their ecosystem is going to do what Apple's ecosystem does right. And so I do see them as a major player in this market moving forward, but that's all going to look different. Look, I think Apple has taken a different stand on privacy and security than some of the other vendors, I appreciate what they've done. They've certainly helped to secure these devices, I think they've enabled a world, or are starting to enable the world where we're not just ad tracks, and all of this private data is floating around for those purposes. And so I think, having a vision towards that, as we start to deliver that it's going to benefit all of the consumers of that technology, right? And so I do think we have to broaden this out, because they think if we continually say "one organisation is going to own the future of a virtual reality world," that's probably going to be incorrect. There'll be a number of technology players, Nvidia is doing some really cool things with this digital clone of Earth and being able to, you know, look at storm patterns, and all of this really cool stuff. We know, the military is embracing AR and VR for training purposes, to drive down the cost of, you know, sending munitions down range, and again, being able to do that stuff. And so I do, but I think fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves the question, what do we want in this future? And I think everybody needs a voice at that table. Certainly security should be at the table, but there needs to be other consumer voices there as well, to advocate for things like what happens when we have cyber stalking and bullying, how are we going to do this? What are we going to do when you have completely made up personas in a in a virtualized reality? That look like me that talk like me, how am I as a consumer going to be able to vet Rory on the other end of this call in a virtualized world, to know that that's actually who it is that I'm talking to, and then take action based on that. And you can imagine, in a corporation where a CEO can tell a CFO to wire transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars outside of a company, that's going to become a problem. We were already seeing that in the current version of the digital world that we have. And we will certainly see massive amounts of scam and fraud inside of you know, the metaverse virtual reality, whatever we call that,

Rory

Right I mean, I know that there are already, you do see reports around deep fakes being used for job interviews. And some of that might be at the moment, again, still in its early stages. But certainly, I can see the potential for identity fraud and phishing to kind of take on a whole new, a whole new identity in this new realm. I guess on that note, what do you what do you think, like a metaverse threat actor will look like?

Rick

It's very interesting. So what I think about is how cybercriminals always look at technology, right? And so again, because I got to wear this adversarial hat for a long time, and still do, and we think about the misuse cases, right? So it's pretty typical developer wants to get the thing working. How do we do this at scale? How do we make sure we're not burning people's eyeballs out or engaging the brain? These are all considerations as we're strapping things to our faces, right? From our perspective, we look at misuse cases. So how can I start to deny service to that thing, so that I can make the consumer or the organisation pay me some sort of extortion? Right? How can I start to — and you've seen some of this in attempts of virtualized worlds. How can I do something like digital mods that fill up a space that's supposed to be a safe space that's created for something right, so I'm interfering, you know, on those fronts, and then, of course, I'm how can I get to the money, right? So if the answer is, well, it's easier for me to go into the metaverse and scam a nother human than it is for me to create a bunch of malware that I then have to test, send out, figure out who QAs it, get somebody to click on a link, like I know we purport that it's fairly easy to trick humans. But that being said, we've got a bunch of technology to do that. That won't exist in the metaverse, right. So you can expect a number of security companies to start to address the risks as well. And then certainly, as companies start to adopt it, I mean, I think back to something simplistic, like when, when Furbies came out, right? And then the DoD banned them from the Pentagon because they recorded conversations, or Google Glass was banned from Google campuses when it came out because it recorded right. And so how does the other person know that the conversations report being recorded? Did they consent? All of those things, those are all considerations from a legal perspective and a risk perspective, we're gonna have to build into this new world. And I think, look, the cool part of all of it is, we actually get to design it. Right? Like, we're humans, we're now working on some in the future. And so we do get to look at the past, have those design considerations? And then really move forward with like, how can we start to fundamentally get rid of some of these things from the beginning, because we know that they're going to happen, right? And so I hope the opportunity is exciting for folks that are working on those projects.

Rory

I had never heard about that Furby ban. That's, that's incredible. It does raise kind of an interesting point, though, which is that certain dichotomies that currently exist in the sector are going to, I guess, necessarily have to be carried over into metal as tech, such as public and private sector. If you're talking about educational bodies, but also government entities, perhaps even like you're saying the Department of Defence wanting to use metaverse tech versus versus private companies, are the necessary discussions around that happening right now? Or do you think there's there's too much focus on the maybe the private sector applications, the business applications of this tech right now?

Rick

I think governments across the globe are struggling with the tech that they have, and so they're hesitant to start to adopt it. Certainly, you know, folks like DARPA, and some of the research agencies have, that's what they do. But I think more broadly, as you look at governments, they're really struggling with patching. They're, they're struggling with endpoint detection and response and being able to report that they've had a breach. Right? So you see, new executive orders new legislation across the globe, to try to get them to a place where it's reasonable security to build on top of, and so I do expect for the next few years, they have some fundamental projects and some heavy lifts that they're going through. Great, we encourage it, we're helping them as much as possible along with, I think, a lot of other vendors, but then they'll start to build upon that right. And so getting something like continual authentication over the technology they have, they they they're going to have to figure that process out, they're gonna have to figure the tech out, and then they can build on it, right? And so my expectation in the future is the work they're doing now, from a security fundamentals perspective, will benefit them in the future.

Rory

That's fantastic. So you mentioned you made a reference there to some of the work that VMware has been doing in this space. And in, in general, across the across the industry. Seeing, or given that this is something that is likely to create massive waves in the tech sector, however, it turns out, what is VMware specifically currently doing in anticipation of this sort of big shift?

Rick

Well, look, I mean, I think we have to work on this idea that things are born secure. So so you'll hear us say this a lot. You'll hear us talk about this a lot. What does that mean? It means that the design considerations for security and misused or thought about upfront, and then technology enables developers to be able to deliver that in a way that covers the full lifecycle. Now look, that's a whole mouthful, all of the security professionals that are listening in the IT professionals will understand parts and pieces of that, maybe that is a big piece is your secure software design lifecycle. A big piece is going to be the ability to contextualise all of the data and telemetry to be able to do you know, behavioural analysis to find the bad guys. That being said, what we're really working on, is this idea that applications and infrastructure are born secure, maintained throughout the entire lifecycle of that workload, that application, that server in a secure fashion, and then eventually turned off securely, right? So whether that's an encryption of data and deletion, whether that's ensuring that your data is backed up to an air gapped environment, that then is restored clean, all of those things is really, I think, what VMware is working on, because we understand, we're the fundamental virtualization technology that lives underneath all of this, right? And so, when we look at it, it's a stack, we have to provide, I think, strong prevention and detection controls there that other people can rely on build the top up, and that's what we're focused on.

Rory

And in your discussions with customers, is this coming up more and more as a concern, or maybe something that they're excited about that you're having to then discuss with them about the actual reality of it?

Rick

I'm very lucky, I live on the West Coast of America, and I work with West Coast companies. So we have a tendency to move a little faster than I think a whole lot of other places. So yes, I would say Northern California is already in some cases adopting, you see a lot of companies that are being built around it right to do those things. That being said, the rest of the globe, intentionally is a little slower, right? I mean, after all, these are the pioneers that are proving the tech and all of that stuff, right. So I get to see a little preview, I get to see some of the folks that are working on it. And then I think I have a pretty strong idea, as I talk to people about it. I can tell you, I've talked to no CISOs over the last 18 months where it's at the top of their project list. Generally speaking, ransomware is still at the top of that list. Again, the security fundamentals of being able to patch as quickly as possible, and then of course, recover from some types of these attacks. And then what they're really concerned about is the fewest number of tools to do the security job. So they're retooling. They're rebuilding their processes in an automated fashion, to again, with this eye towards being able to deliver quickly these other solutions coming down the road. And so fundamentally, we're fixing a bunch of stuff and architectures, to allow for the future and rapid delivery of these solutions.

Rory

That raises an interesting question about kind of, fixing the environment we have now before moving into this new space. Do you think that, whereas people are currently kind of talking around the metaverse technology as this, this whole new realm to exist in but in its current form, it's going to have to be entrenched in a lot of the systems that we already have. Do you think that there's a potential for some of the worst problems that we're currently experiencing to currently be carried over into into Metaverse technology?

Rick

Yes. And I'll give you one brief example. We're not writing a new internet protocol for the metaverse, it's going to be IPv6 and IPv4. Generally speaking, it'll be IPv6, because it's a lot of new companies that are adopting it. Manipulation of that TCP/IP stack is still real, those threats exist all the time, adversaries take advantage. And so again, we're using insecure protocols today that a bunch of technology had to be built on top of, to allow for things like transport layer security, session layer security, cryptography, the data at rest, all of those things, right. And so here's the good news. The good news is, we've proven a bunch of this technology over the last 25 years. I would certainly hope that again, as organisations are implementing this technology and organisations are building this technology, that we take those lessons and build them in. And crypto, in my humble opinion, it's a must like, like the fact that we are even telling consumers to consider using a VPN, like, no, your application should have good strong encryption built into it. And the consumer should not have to be concerned about the transport layer security. Now it's great that they are, I encourage everybody today to be, but that's just one small example of how the underlying, you know, internet protocols if at all are, you know, easily subverted and built on top of. And then of course, you know, Linux operating systems are still going to be in play, right? You know, things like software defined radio attacks for the chips in the motherboards, the firmware that sits underneath of all of that those are all part of the supply chain of the metaverse, and will need good security controls.

Rory

Is there a risk that we're moving too quick with Metaverse tech right now, and we risk sort of building it on top of all of these systems and reaching a point maybe in five to ten years where it's too late, we can't pull those systems out from underneath metaverse tech?

Rick

It's a good question. I think I have a futurist hat that I wear, and a technology hat. And I do love the future of technology. But then I have a very realist, a little bit pessimistic brain as well, which keeps me in security. So I think the pure security professionals, and if you asked any hacker, we would say yes, we're entirely moving too fast. But I think we would have said that of almost any technology. So that being said, I think there is a speed market and a balance here. Look, you've got to create a market, you got to sell into a market so that you can prove a market, go secure the market, right? And so those pieces don't exist in vacuums. And so I do think we have to move fast in certain areas. Certainly, I think I have some caution about just moving super fast when it comes to like, video game markets and stuff. Which is, fine and probably going to be where we see the largest spread of the technology first. So no, look, security is never going to get our way because if we did, it would take another 10-15 years of development. So we have to be realistic as well and say, look, I think there are amazing use cases in the future, you know, this idea that I can perform surgeries or consult for, you know, in a third world country where maybe they don't have access to surgeons. This is amazing, you know that what we're talking about here, I think, being able to bring humans together in a way, that's not a zoom box. I know the last two and a half years zoom boxes have been killing me, right? So at some point, I do think like it's going to be fun, it'll be really cool,some of the stuff we see from an AR perspective or, you know, walking into office buildings, those types. But yes, the the adversaries are going to take advantage. And they're going to look for us to make some mistakes along this development path. And they'll take advantage of it.

Rory

So with that in mind, is this something that security teams and individual companies, on a customer by customer basis, should be worrying about yet, in anticipation of implementing this? Or is this more of a, like you were saying, a kind of secure by design concern for those architects that are leading the way in the sector.

Rick

I think if you're bleeding edge companies, certainly you're going to look to move as fast as possible, especially if you're diversifying your business portfolio as well, where you have an existing, you know, social or web company that I think could benefit from that adoption, you're gonna move a little faster. So it is probably a design consideration over the next three years for those types of organisations. Generally speaking, again, the design consideration the architecture, discussions that we're having, fundamentally revolve around things like continual authentication, zero trust, enabling, you know, again, born secure applications, where we understand vulnerabilities that exist, and then we're able to rapidly do those. Because we ran really fast to get to this point. And so there's a little bit of reworking we have to do in architectures, and most of it has to do with cloud, right? So if you think about how we used to do security versus how we're doing it now a lot of people are reworking it. Metaverse will be a consideration as part of this strategy, only because we know the metaverse will be powered by the cloud. And generally speaking, if you're accounting for some of the cloud security components, you'll be accounting for things that you need in the metaverse as well.

Rory

So with those security concerns to one side for a second. On a regulatory basis, how is the metaverse — this is a very broad question — but how is the metaverse going to be regulated?

Rick

This is a great question. I generally think regulation will follow all other regulations for tech, which means it'll be late to the table. Now, I don't say that to knock legislators or regulators. Generally, it's just the way that it goes, they have to figure it out. You know, clear considerations we're going to have to think about upfront: what do we do on education especially for, you know, children? Right? And who, you know, how is that going to work? And I have a whole lot of questions, right, I got a lot of nieces and nephews, that'll probably wind up strapping a headset on at some point. But as you can imagine, if you're a parent, you have major concerns over how that works in a non-physical way today. Now, I would also say, from a safety perspective, at least in America, there's probably some benefit to moving towards these models as well, right. So I think it'll be per-vertical. I think some of the, again, some of the some of the industries will move a little bit faster than the other ones. And then what we'll see is iterations through regulations over time, right. So we know GDPR didn't get it exactly right the first time and there's the you know, we know the California Privacy Act had to change. So we'll put something out there, it'll iterate, but it probably won't be fast enough to satisfy anybody's needs. Because generally speaking again, when it comes to things like cybercrime and theft, we have to observe the behaviour, laws across the globe have to be created, they have to be voted on democracies, take a little take a little while to get that done right. And then we see some benefit from it. So I do think, particular to regulations in the industry that are helpful, something like PCI DSS, I think, is has been more meaningful for credit card encryptions and to disrupt credit card theft. So adoptions of models like that, instead of adopting, you know, models that add a bunch of overhead for no particular reason than to add the overhead right. I think there's an effective way to do that.

Rory

It's interesting, you mentioned GDPR. But considering these issues across different continents across different countries, do you think also that this focus currently on the metaverse as if it's going to be one unified entity as opposed to a series of different metaverses used by different organisations, different entities will run into issues like data sovereignty as well, that maybe could stymie this unified vision that people are currently talking about?

Rick

I think the metaverse will follow the real world Internet, and we thought that the internet was gonna wind up 'The Internet'. It's not actually true. There's a lot of different internets, and a lot of different rules, especially depending on how you're governed, right? So no, I don't expect that say the CCP's version of the metaverse is going to be the exact same as the UK's, or the exact same as the US's. Certainly I think, the local citizen, and the consumers are going to have a big say, because they're voting with dollars, right? But I think each government has had to, again, based on risk, based on breaches, based on privacy, has had to sort of draw that line. And so what we've ended up with is a lot of different internets, and a lot of different piles of data around. I think the metaverse is is certainly going to find that, and I can't imagine that authoritarian governments across the globe are going to want to facilitate open access to information and not having a big say in how that's developed.

Rory

On that point of having a say, do you think that some sort of framework that companies could agree to that that governments could agree to around metaverse tech is necessary? Or or will it just naturally fall into, like you're saying, a geographic perspective?

Rick

No, I think generally technology happens to follow that right? So whether it's IEEE standards, ISO standards that you know, NIST standards, will certainly account for it as well. And so I would assume NIST is probably already looking at some guidance around metaverse. I'm probably not in the room for like the draft discussion, but at some point, it'll come out for a draft form. We as security professionals, with the way on it will iterate through the changes make some recommendations. But yeah, I would expect there'll be specific, you know, standards for metaverse for things like communications, interoperability, all of those things. And if, if you're going to win in that space, you're going to have to be open. Like, I think it's gonna be really hard to go down the path of a closed technology unless you're someone like Apple who already has a massive consumer base

Rory

To kind of round off the discussion: to turn one of the earliest questions I asked on its head, we've talked about a lot of the security drawbacks of metaverse tech. But given that we have an opportunity to, as you say, kind of author our own future with this technology, what are some of the real benefits or potential benefits that to security specifically, that that could be be achieved through metaverse technology?

Rick

Well, I'll tell you one that I think about all the time. And you hear this from security professionals: I have a team of people that help me, that team might be called the manage detection and response team, it could be called managed security provider, you know, we have all kinds of names for our third parties. But one of the hardest things to achieve is the context of what's happening in the environment, right, the familiarity of each one of these humans, or these groups of humans working together to drive a singular outcome. So, when it comes to upfront consulting, when it comes to architecture design, when it comes to incident response, when it comes to facilitating incident response across the globe, being able to do briefings, man, again, I think have disparate teams sit in a room like we're with each other on a virtualized whiteboard. It's one of the hardest things that I have a problem with today, with the technology that we have in place for remote work. And yes, I know there's tonnes of companies. Yes, we've used all the tech, it is not the same as sitting down real time with six people, when someone has their hands on a whiteboard, eraser. And we're just iterating through stuff, it's just not right. So I think I'm hopeful from that perspective. And then I certainly think from, you know, from my own home life, look, again, I have to get on planes all the time, my friends all have to get on planes, we are trading off that work life balance. And I think, for us, and our experience of burnout and fatigue, and the hours, I do think particular to cybersecurity, there will be an impact to that. And then I hope, if we actually do our jobs right, with continual identity authentication, maybe we can get to a place where we start to eliminate some of this fraud, and the scams, that one human purports to another human, because all they're doing is lying and tricking the other human. So maybe we can think about those use cases in the metaverse and drive some of them down, right? And I don't know how we do that yet. Some people would say we're gonna adopt MRI technology, other people you know, it gets a little dystopian, too, right. That being said, we do have a chance to design it, we do have a chance to consider it. And so what I'm looking for, for these organisations that are building this technology, and the developers, and the architects is like proof, prove that is trustworthy. Give me the transparency that we need to adopt it. Because I think we want to, we love the future, we love it. But it's just a little risky, and so you got to give us what we need to lead the organisations to this change.

Rory

Well it certainly sounds like if we play our cards, right, there's, there's lots to look forward to.

Rick

Absolutely, I think it's, it's just, it's really cool, right? I mean, we're at a point where we can, we can play with our own reality in a way that's safe, we can move significant chunks of pieces, like, you know, this idea that Nvidia did with this digital Earth. And being able to use actual weather models, and what happens if we, you know, move that, like putting all those pieces together that has a huge value to humanity. And that's the exciting future that I want to make sure, you know, we safeguard and shepherd this technology through.

Rory

Fantastic. Well, Rick, thank you so much for being on the show.

Rick

Thanks for having me.

Rory

As always, You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk. You can also follow us on social media, as well as subscribe to our daily newsletter. Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and a review. We'll be back next week with more insight from the world of IT but until then, goodbye.

Meta has announced a new ‘Communities’ feature for WhatsApp, allowing for group chats to be organised together under an umbrella group.

With Communities, WhatsApp states that groups such as workplaces can bring up to 50 disparate group chats together under umbrella categories such as departments or office locations. Unlike Facebook groups, WhatsApp communities will be invite-only.

For added functionality, community administrators will be able to send community-wide announcements, run community-wide polls, and manage messages within group chats.

This will allow for a hierarchical structure, in which group chats are run by individual managers with only certain individuals within an organisation given control over entire communities.

WhatsApp is one of the most widely-used messaging apps worldwide and has a wide business userbase. Around 400 million people are believed to use WhatsApp in India, where the app is also widely used for communication between companies and customers as well as for internal company communications.

Communities will primarily benefit internal communications, in practice acting like productivity apps such as Slack or Teams. The update adds to this by expanding video calls to include 32 participants, and increasing group chat sizes fourfold from a maximum of 256 to 1,024 participants, both of which benefit large teams.

However, it will still lack a number of features such as shared document editing, integrated automation, and plugins that such apps provide. Despite this, as WhatsApp is free it remains a useful option for communication amongst small and medium-sized businesses.

WhatsApp Business, a separate app from WhatsApp LLC, allows businesses to engage directly with customers manually and through basic automation, as well as advertise catalogues within the app.

CRM specialist Salesforce and WhatsApp partnered recently to offer firms a unified commerce and marketing platform within WhatsApp, with the ability to bring customers into a chat through adverts on Facebook, and use data to target audiences.

A key feature of WhatsApp chats is that they are end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), giving an added layer of privacy to all messages sent on the app. Businesses might find this especially attractive, as it offers a layer of security for sensitive business information.

This is not without controversy, with the UK government largely opposed to E2EE despite two-thirds of IT professionals saying banning E2EE would do more harm than good. The currently stalled Online Safety Bill, proposed under former home secretary Priti Patel, would override E2EE by legally compelling companies operating messaging apps to scan for child abuse imagery.

Although WhatsApp is frequently applied in the private sector, its use by public servants such as MPs has drawn the attention of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). In July, the ICO called for a review of the government's WhatsApp use, stating that frequent use of the app for official channels could breach transparency and accountability requirements.

Meta remains not only committed to retaining WhatsApp encryption, but also eventually rolling out E2EE to Messenger and Instagram as well.

The new features are expected to be rolled out imminently worldwide, on both WhatsApp mobile and desktop.

IT Pro has approached WhatsApp for comment.

Logitech has launched its new Sight meeting-room camera to tackle the issue of remote workers feeling disengaged from meetings held in hybrid work environments.

Sight is a desk-based camera that takes the form of a tower slightly larger than a water bottle. It has AI functionality to automatically pan across the individual in the physical meeting room who is speaking.

It's equipped with two 4K cameras on either side of the tower that combine to take in a 315-degree view of the meeting room, working in tandem with the fixed-position cameras that are already commonplace in meeting rooms.

The tower sits in the middle of the desk and as participants talk, it uses smart audio technology to track and detect sounds which then dictate to whom the camera lenses focus.

Logitech invited IT Pro to experience the camera and with hands-on testing, the camera delivers a far more immersive experience for the remote portion of the meeting than the current 360-degree cameras on the market.

Participants receive both the standard view from the main webcam, but also a close-up of the speaker to increase engagement.

The device can be fitted to a desk - either mounted centrally or with a grommet - or set up using a tripod if the meeting room doesn't have desks.

Sight also has USB and Ethernet ports, and in the future will support daisy chain functionality that will enable a two-device setup that will make larger meetings possible. At present, Sight can accommodate a maximum of eight physical meeting participants.

It's compatible with all the major video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and most operating systems, across PCs, Macs, and mobile.

Meetings have drastically changed since the pandemic, with most companies now a mix of in-office and remote staff. However, the experience of a hybrid meeting isn't consistent for all as the remote participants on a call are often left feeling isolated or too distant to engage.

Occasionally, the issue is the technology within the meeting room itself; hardware that isn't in any way immersive, leaving the remote attending feeling like they're viewing CCTV of someone else's meeting.

The unique idea is the result of an extensive research and development programme. Logitech told IT Pro that it actually scraps more products than it brings to market in its quest for usability and that Sight is an evolution of that extensive work and its wider webcam portfolio.

At this time, there isn't a specific release date as the company wants to release it to testing partners in order to iron out any potential bugs before launching sometime in the summer of 2023.

The product will come in either graphite or white and will cost $1,999 (£1,745) including VAT. UK pricing will be revealed closer to the release date.

The numbers are in for Meta’s third quarter, and they presented a picture of a company battered by stiff competition, economic headwinds, but above all else a devotion to metaverse tech that continues to degrade investor confidence.

In its most recent earnings report, Meta (née Facebook) announced that net income was down 52% year on year, while spending had surged 19% year on year across the same period, driven by the twin pressures of economic shifts and in-house metaverse spending. Overall, revenue across the quarter was down 4% year on year at $27.7 billion as company sales continued to decline in a year which was also mired by struggling performance with advertising too.

Meta says it has taken financial challenges into consideration with its 2023 budgeting, and is applying scrutiny to “almost all” of its investment portfolios with macro effects in mind. But there is every sign that in the coming year, Meta investors have something of a bitter pill to swallow. When it comes to Reality Labs, the Meta business tasked with the firm’s virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and headline-grabbing ‘metaverse’ development, costs show no signs of decreasing.

In fact, the company said in the report that it actually expects to spend even more on its VR ventures in the coming year than ever before, a fact made more shocking - especially to investors - by the context of the business's financial situation. Reality Labs’ operating cost for Q3 was $3.7 billion, adding to overall losses of more than $9 billion in 2022 so far. On this trajectory, losses are almost guaranteed to exceed the $10 billion reported for 2021, and the company admits that its projections account for even more to be poured into the venture in the coming year.

“We do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year over year,” said Dave Wehner, chief financial officer at Meta.

This would be a perilous undertaking with a clear end goal in mind, a spending gauntlet for the company to run amidst the global economic downturn, in pursuit of the glory of pioneering a new technological standard for all corners of life. But the tech giant’s gambit is even more baffling for the simple reason that as yet, there is no compelling use case for metaverse technology. For all the money poured into it, the virtual reality oasis that Zuckerberg promises at each company announcement has yet to materialise, and each iteration presented thus far has prompted comments that the overarching idea for metaverse is a waste of time.

In response to a question on the rollout of metaverse tech, Zuckerberg indicated that although people might argue that it’s a bad investment, he believes that the technology will be important for the future, and it is therefore worth investing in. Speaking to the nervousness of investors, he also stressed that those with patience will be rewarded in due course. Whether that will pay off is anyone's guess.

The Guardian reported that Meta shares fell 19% in after-hours reading following the call, slashing company value by more than $65 billion, and shares overall are trading almost 60% lower than they were in Q1.

Increased Reality Labs costs are, in part, driven by the launch of Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 virtual reality headset, as well as due to the annual salaries of new employees. Indeed, Meta has increased its workforce by 28% over the past year, with 87,314 employees now working for the company.

With salary costs this high, Meta could replicate cost-cutting moves of other big tech companies, such as Microsoft’s hiring slowdown or even Twilio’s 11% cut to workforce. The company already cancelled internships for 2023, with candidates that had already been offered placements informed of the cost-cutting measure via email, as the company admitted it was evaluating its 2023 hiring strategy.

Of course, Reality Labs was far from the only contributing factor to Meta’s downturn this quarter. As with Microsoft’s quarterly earnings, the strength of the dollar across the period affected international sales unfavourably, and advertising demand across the sector is slowing as inflation bites into company budgets. Apple's implementation of greater privacy measures in iOS 14.5 also bit into the effectiveness of Facebook identifying trackers, in a move that Meta says will directly cost it $10 billion in 2022.

Competition is proving troubling for the company, as it faces a real rival in TikTok, the favoured app of Gen-Z. The firm, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, offers users short-form videos, and an advanced content algorithm, in a strategy that has become both hugely popular and incredibly profitable, even as it faces calls to be removed from app stores for national security.

“To remain competitive with the likes of TikTok, whose UK sales surged sixfold to almost $1 billion earlier this month, Meta is currently testing the function to schedule posts and Instagram Reels with a tool inside the app, which would be a significant boost to the platform’s content programming capabilities,” said Zarnaz Arlia, chief marketing officer at Facebook and Instagram marketing partner Emplifi.

At Meta’s most recent earnings call Zuckerberg aimed to temper investor fears by stating that in coming years, the firm will “pace” Reality Labs investments, to facilitate company-wide growth and boost operating income. Its stated strategy is to dedicate a set portion of profits from its ‘Family of Apps’ - Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram - towards Reality Labs and other R&D ventures, whilst retaining enough for healthy shareholder returns.

It’s hard to think of a word more associated with metaverse tech right now than 'faith'. Even the most bullish of investors and ardent supporters of the prospect of web3 will likely raise eyebrows at these results and start engaging with the long-held criticism of metaverse tech. Being asked to place trust in a concept that still hasn’t sparked the Zuck-promised tech revolution, and is the butt of jokes by many in the tech community, could prove too much for investors in the coming year.

The idea of using your mind to control digital devices has been in development for decades. Only in recent years, though, has the brain-computer interface (BCI) begun to show practical potential. Indeed, this futuristic-sounding technology could soon be the next frontier for the user interface (UI), post-touch and post-voice.

BCI technology allows users to focus their minds on a task they want to achieve, and transmits their instructions to a device or application. This is commonly done through electrodes planted close to the scalp, although some BCI systems use implanted sensors. Researchers at Berkeley have also created 'neural dust' – a small device the size of a grain of rice – that could be implanted in the body and connected wirelessly to a controlling device.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the military sees a plethora of potential applications in BCI technology, with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) carrying out much of the current research. For businesses, BCI might seem more at home in science fiction, but so did the likes of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and quantum computers, until breakthroughs shifted the paradigm.

BCI could be on a similar trajectory and could be practical in specific environments, futurist Ian Pearson tells IT Pro. "BCI is likely to be used in situations where other interfaces are not appropriate: the battlefield, for example, or public areas where speech, typing or gestural control isn't possible," he says.

The technology can, for example, be used to change channels on a TV or send messages. Consumer deployments aside, various industries across the economy, albeit cautiously, will be keen to exploit the potential of this emerging technology.

BCI is connecting minds together

Some of the most promising research is happening in the realm of medical science. As shown by organisations like the BCI Pioneers Coalition, the technology is helping disabled patients control artificial limbs or people with severe mobility issues and paralysis control speech synthesisers or motorised wheelchairs. Related implanted technologies can also relieve the symptoms of neurological conditions.

"Researchers are optimistic that the development of BCI technology, if applied correctly, could greatly enhance human-machine teaming,” Dr Helen Dudfield, chief of training for QinetiQ, tells IT Pro. "'Adaptive' BCI, meanwhile, with the ability to respond to an operator's needs at the speed-of-thought, can help to manage performance in mentally challenging situations, by streamlining information and monitoring and reacting to stimuli.”

Several BCI technologies already exist, including Neurable, which builds brainwave sensors into headphones to make their BCI technology accessible. Emotiv, Kernel, Bitbrain, OpenBCI,and Elon Musk’s Neuralink have sensing technologies that developers can use to develop their BCI products further. NextMind, too, is how many envisage BCI manifesting in the workplace – a device that augments existing control technologies such as keyboards, mice, and VR headsets.

In business, BCI could become one component of a multifaceted interface, says Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) artificial intelligence (AI) ethics engineer and AI faculty at Singularity University, Eleanor Watson. “BCI systems can further streamline technologies which attempt to present immersive interfaces and blended realities. It may enable AR within natural eyes, by interfacing with the optical network of the brain rather than technology before or inside the eyes.

“BCI can enable us to tune our environment with reduced or altered stimuli without requiring anything over our physical ears,” Watson adds. “These elements, together, will provide greater control over our personal circumstances on one level, but it may also insulate us from stimuli in a manner which could be unhelpful. The sudden breakdown of BCI tech could create a jarring and unsettling return to base reality.”

Can BCI represent a solid business opportunity?

Whether this technology can shift from a novelty to a practical tool remains to be seen. BCI systems do have several business applications, but expectations for executives to begin handing out brainwave devices should be tapered. The hardware, for example, would be extremely cumbersome, and businesses would be required to make huge investments in technology that hasn’t yet proven its worth. The reluctance to adopt VR on a widespread basis, despite some demonstrable benefits like in training, signals how long it might take.

There are also several privacy issues to address. Specifically, when using this technology, how could brain activity be tracked and analysed? Some employers have been keen to harness new technology, and exploit trends like hybrid work, to further raise the level of . There’s no reason this won’t be extended if and when BCI is adopted. The Harvard Business Review, for example, ponders whether a BCI human resources (HR) dashboard is the future, where employees’ attention could be monitored through the technology they use.

“If BCI becomes commonplace, people may be coerced into adopting them as an implied condition of employment, as an efficient employee,” says the IEEE’s Watson, warning about the potential privacy issues. “This may lead to people being even more burdened with work and overstimulation. Not everyone may be able to use BCI, and any implanted technologies may go quickly out of date and may not be easy to upgrade. Imagine being stuck with the limitations of a first-generation smartphone for the rest of your life.”

How BCI would be deployed will need a detailed debate to ensure the ethics, social and emotional impact BCI could have in a military setting, for instance. In an office or remote working environment, how users would integrate BCI into their working lives has yet to come into focus. Today, a few novel consumer products illustrate that the fundamental technology that underpins BCI is tangible. The next stage will be to evolve these technologies into practical business tools.

Accenture and Atlassian have partnered to help organisations learn how to be more agile, after having collaborated together on over 100 projects.

The pair will also help companies get more value from tech investments, improve customer and employee experience, embrace change, and introduce new enterprise agility services.

Accenture and Atlassian are hoping to support clients in every step of the enterprise agility journey, from speeding time to market through product-centric development and migration to the cloud, to adopting lean management principles that connect strategy to execution.

The two companies have already collaborated globally on over 100 engagements for various clients across industries. One of these is Belong, a division belonging to Telstra, Australia’s largest telco. The organisations helped Belong to implement Atlassian’s cloud-based agile work management software, Jira and Jira Align, at all levels and across all teams, reshaping how the team tackles cross-functional collaboration to be more productive, innovative, and agile.

“As organisations continue to move to the cloud in droves and make substantial investments in technology to transform how they do business, new capabilities are needed for agile enterprise management,” said Greg Douglass, senior managing director and global lead for Technology Strategy & Advisory at Accenture.

“Through our strategic collaboration with Atlassian, we are bringing comprehensive enterprise agility solutions to our clients, which are critical not only for the technology organisation, but for modernising the way all teams will work in the future.”

The two companies will also establish an Accenture Atlassian Center of Excellence, which will provide coaching, education, agile practice disciplines, and platform enablement to clients around the world.

“Accenture has a proven ability to drive transformative value by combining technology and process excellence for the world’s largest organisations,” said Kevin Egan, head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian. “In combination with Atlassian’s platform, designed to unlock the full potential of every individual within every team, we can achieve true and lasting digital transformation for our joint clients that is never truly done but continuously innovated on.”

Accenture has formed a number of partnerships recently, and teamed up with the US multinational Mars earlier this month to transform and modernise its global manufacturing operations. Accenture is set to help the confectionery giant to expand its use of artificial intelligence, cloud, edge technology, and digital twins.

Microsoft’s newly launched workplace app, Places, is designed to make adopting hybrid work models easier for both staff and workplaces themselves.

Among a host of features, it includes satellite navigation-style functionality for workers to more easily find meeting rooms around the office building.

By configuring the office’s layout and facilities within Places, workers will also be able to find the best hot desking spots in the office that are vacant at that time.

Places will exist as a standalone windowed program, rather than an extension to other productivity apps like Teams and Outlook, and will also offer other capabilities such as a streamlined view of what workspaces have been booked by colleagues.

“As business decision makers consider redesigning physical workspaces to better accommodate hybrid work environments, technology will be needed to form the bridge across two historically different worlds – in-person and remote work,” said Microsoft.

“Microsoft Places will use intelligence to optimise where work happens in hybrid work: connecting virtual and physical spaces to drive increased connections, engagement and productivity while providing the holistic picture of hybrid work that’s missing today.”

Intelligent booking of meeting spaces will also offer insights as to what rooms within the office will be best suited for different types of meetings, factoring in the technology needs of both remote and in-person attendees.

Workers will also receive notifications based on when the best time may be to leave the office, based on traffic data.

For example, one worker may be notified that it would be ideal to leave the office at 3pm since that would reduce their overall commute time, maximise their time spent at home, and still get them back in time to attend late afternoon meetings.

The hybrid scheduling feature will take data from Outlook and Teams to determine when workers are most likely to be in the office and recommend optimal times to book in-person collaboration sessions.

Microsoft said Places will also facilitate what it’s calling “serendipitous meetups”, a ‘feature’ which essentially allows workers to look at their office floor from a top-down perspective and book a five-minute mini meetup like a trip to the water cooler, just organised in a formal fashion.

From a sustainability perspective, office managers may benefit from Places as Microsoft said the new app will offer insights into how occupied an office will be on any given day, opening up energy-saving opportunities.

If the office is populated sparsely on one day, office managers could close a number of floors and turn the respective light and power sources off to save money and prevent energy waste, for example.

Announced at the company’s annual Ignite conference this week, Microsoft Places will be launching at an undetermined date in 2023. Interested organisations can learn more at Microsoft’s dedicated web page.

Microsoft has unveiled Teams Premium today as well as boosting the base version of Microsoft Teams with a catalogue of new features.

Microsoft Teams Premium is built on Microsoft Teams and aims to make every meeting, from one-on-ones to large meetings, to virtual appointments to webinars more personalised, intelligent, and secure, the company said.

One of the new features is something the company calls intelligent recap, which uses AI to make meetings that users attend, or miss, more productive. It suggests action items and owners, so follow-ups aren’t missed, with Microsoft likening it to having a virtual assistant attending every meeting.

Intelligent recap creates smarter recordings after the meeting which will automatically generate chapters and insights, including when a user’s name was mentioned, when a screen was shared, or when a user left a meeting early to help them discover important moments to catch up on. It’s expected to begin rolling out in the first half of 2023.

The tech giant has also beefed up its search, with suggested speakers that are personalised to users based on who they closely work with, helping them to quickly search through transcripts by the people they might be most interested in.

New meeting guides in Teams Premium help users customise their meetings and automate their setup. Managed by the IT department, it allows users to select a meeting type, like a client call, help desk call, or a meeting, to come up with ideas and the options will automatically be set.

In Teams Premium, organisations will also be able to customise their meeting branding into the meeting lobby and create custom backgrounds and 'together modes' for employees to enjoy.

Premium meetings will now include live translation for captions, delivering AI-powered, real-time translations from 40 spoken languages so meeting participants can read captions in their own language. If an organiser has Teams Premium, all meeting attendees will be able to use this feature.

The security of meetings is also now improved in Teams Premium with advanced meeting protection, to safeguard confidential meetings. It allows organisations to implement options like watermarking to deter leaks and limit who can record, aiming to help keep a discussion private.

Teams Premium will also allow users to easily schedule appointments through Virtual Appointments, a feature already available in Microsoft 365 and Office 365. Customers will be able to receive text reminders to join custom-branded virtual appointments through their mobile devices without having to download Teams.

Moreover, appointment schedules can be set up to manage scheduled and on-demand virtual appointments in one location, sporting capabilities like appointment queueing. Users will also get access to usage trends and the history of virtual appointments, complete with effectiveness metrics such as the rate of no-shows.

The introduction of advanced webinars in Teams Premium will bring new host and event management controls to make it easier to manage webinars.

There will be a registration wait list, keeping the webinar registration open even after the event has reached capacity to allow additional people to register and, if new spots open up, admit them if approved by an organiser. Organisers will also be able to send automated reminder emails ahead of their event.

The tech giant has also introduced a virtual green room, where hosts and presenters have a dedicated space separate from attendees where they can socialise, monitor, chat, manage attendee settings, and review content before the event starts.

Lastly, organisers will be able to curate the attendee view so attendees only see shared content and participants an organiser brings up on-screen. This can include multiple presenters with a presentation or even an attendee raising their hand to ask a question live in the webinar.

Features will begin to roll out in December 2022, as part of Teams Premium preview, with general availability expected in February 2023. Microsoft also said the expected price is set to be $10 per user per month.

What are the new features in Microsoft Teams?

Despite the tech giant unveiling its new premium tier, it’s also bolstering Microsoft Teams with new features.

The platform now supports video clips, allowing users to record, send, view, and reply from their desktop or phone. Videos can be played in a recipient’s chat, where they can reply with a message or video clip of their own.

Microsoft is expanding the reactions, where users can express feedback with more than 800 Teams emojis. This will be generally available in November.

The tech giant is also expanding suggested replies from one-on-one chats to group chats. It uses machine learning to generate responses most relevant in group conversations, where users can simply click on one of three responses displayed. This will be available in October.

Moreover, Teams will now have schedule send, which helps users manually select the future date and time that they would like a chat message to be delivered. Users will also be able to use delete chat from November, where they can easily remove themselves from one-on-one or group chat conversations they no longer wish to participate in, without impacting other participants in the same chat conversation.

The platform is also hoping to introduce mention @everyone by the end of the year, to allow users to notify an entire group without having to enter everyone’s name. Teams chat is also aiming to introduce zero-state people recommendations, which suggest specific people to initiate chat conversations based on previous collaborations.

Microsoft is also introducing Cameo, a PowerPoint experience that integrates the Teams camera feed into the PowerPoint Live presentation, allowing users to customise how they appear on slides, with layout recommendations for optimal viewing.

Excel Live was announced, too, it will allow teams to collaboratively edit Excel workbooks in real-time, within the meeting window, on any device, including Android and iOS phones and tablets.

Sheet Views allows everyone co-editing the workbook to sort or filter however they need, without disrupting anyone else’s view, it said. Microsoft expects this feature to roll out starting in October and will be generally available by the end of the year.

There’s also a Together mode, to make participants feel more like they’re together in the same room during a virtual meeting. Organisers can assign seats to meeting participants in this mode or select Together mode for everyone, so all meeting participants will have the same view.

Microsoft has also made Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile generally available. It’s integrated with a user's mobile device native dialler, so users can use their mobiles the way they’re used to while the organisation can enable business calling features and policies on the devices.

The aim is for calls to seamlessly move across networks and devices without any interruptions and can be converted from mobile networks to internet-based video calls in Teams.

It’s currently available with Rogers in Canada, and Telia in Sweden. Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, BT, and Swisscom are set to launch soon, although no specific data was provided, with more operators expected to join the programme.

Meta announced a duo of new partnerships today at its Meta Connect event with Microsoft and Accenture now firmly on hand to help guide the company in its bid to convince businesses that the metaverse is, indeed, the future of work.

Microsoft’s CEO Sataya Nadella was on stage espousing the supposed business benefits of the metaverse with equal vehemence as Meta’s CEO has been for around a year now.

The new deal between the two tech giants will see a much deeper collaboration effort that goes beyond just a few handy Teams plugins for virtual meetings. With Nadella’s presentation today, both Microsoft and Meta now seemed to be joined at the hip, both cheerily galloping off towards the virtual sunset in harmony.

Whether businesses will follow the leaders or remain unconvinced of the future pictured by the pair remains to be seen. Even after a sit down with Micah Collins, Meta’s senior director of product management, to drill down into the finer details of each announcement, we remain firmly on the fence. For an event that was supposed to deliver insights derived from a year of concerted development on the technology, around which Mark Zuckerberg completely reshaped his company, a compelling business case for the technology is still, for us, yet to be made.

Shortly after the much meme-ified rebrand of Facebook to Meta in October 2021, Microsoft was quick to confirm its confidence in the next-generation metaverse technology with Mesh - its take on Teams meetings in a hybrid reality setting.

Its latest announcements go considerably further. Teams was far less of a focus this year and the Meta-Microsoft coalition is clearly aiming to win votes from IT departments and collaboration-hungry teams with a richer Windows experience from inside their own metaverses.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the announcements was the news that there will be a brand-new version of Windows 365 built specifically for Meta VR hardware. How this looks, we’re told, is completely up to Microsoft which will be tasked with developing the entire experience.

According to Collins, it won’t be a case whereby staff will simply be able to slip on a headset and view a bespoke Windows desktop experience that simply works better with a VR interface, it will most likely look more like a separate metaverse experience entirely.

Instead, imagine slipping on a headset and being plunged into a virtual office with which you can interact with numerous elements. Here, you’ll be able to walk up to a virtual desktop and sit at a virtual desk on a virtual chair, which runs a real, cloud-hosted Windows instance that can be used just like a normal, physical desktop.

The benefit this provides isn’t immediately clear. But, it does signal that the reality of metaverse technology may not be as superficial as first imagined, and there is certainly substantial progress being made. From a pure IT perspective, too, there will also be specially designed integrations with Microsoft Intune and Active Directory to enable enterprise security and device management within the workplace.

Microsoft 365 apps will also be getting deeper integrations with metaverse tech, too. Nadella confirmed that the major Office apps will be viewable in meetings and documents will be editable just as they are in current Teams meetings via SharePoint. A Meta spokesperson told IT Pro that the expectation is for additional major software vendors to create their own metaverse integrations and that “the possibilities are endless for future integrations in this space”.

This feels like the first time we’re seeing a serious focus on the metaverse for a business audience, beyond the simple and quite frankly clunky experiences with meetings that have largely been the only material business use case for the new tech so far. It’s obviously still early days for the metaverse but if these are the biggest announcements, it does beg the question of just how beneficial the technology will be for businesses in the long term.

When pressed for his thoughts on the real upside to metaverse tech, Collins said that the big draw is really for teams that place great value in the feeling of social presence in collaborative sessions.

“We think the social presence use cases and the level of upgrade you get from being together in 3D is, from a collaboration use case, the big draw of VR,” he told IT Pro. “There are teams that really value that and really want that level of feeling of connection with the people that they're being productive with.”

Some may feel, then, that metaverse technology may only be for a specific subset of workers or industries working in very specific ways. After a year since the company totally transformed in a way that cemented its commitment to the technology itself, there perhaps should be a more compelling case for the metaverse given the steep cost required in buying the hardware, developing a company’s own metaverse, and so on. Meta also said it’s partnering with Accenture and together with Microsoft, the trio will be working with customers and clients to create VR solutions for businesses, based on their individual needs. Add the Big Four consultancy fees onto the basic costs, coupled with the time it will take to train teams how to use the tech responsibly, and eyebrows will surely be raised over realistic ROI opportunities.

The best is yet to come

There may not yet be a compelling case for most potential customers but like Collins said, there will be teams out there that are buzzing with excitement - the teams that live for collaboration. It’s also worth highlighting once again that this is just the start of metaverse technology’s long journey. It will take ten years for there to be a billion metaverse users, according to Meta’s estimates, and along that road, there will most likely be much more to get excited about.

One of those milestones is Magic Room which Meta teased on stage at Connect and described to IT Pro as a “sign of where [metaverse tech] is going to be, long term”. The idea for Magic Room is a true blend of the virtual and physical worlds - specifically meeting spaces.

Meta said you can think of it as taking your usual meeting room in the office and making a digital twin of that in the company’s metaverse, with each fixture and fitting appearing in both worlds. It will see everyone wearing VR headsets and people in the physical office being able to write notes on the real whiteboard that can be seen by those at home, in the virtual twin. Those at home can write on the digital twin’s whiteboard for it to also be seen by the physical meeting room attendees, alongside the notes made on the physical whiteboard. Again, Magic Room is still early in development and won’t be properly rolled out, in whatever capacity that may be, to users until next year at least.

It’s encouraging to see that Meta is opening up more about the metaverse possibilities and giving prospective customers more to think about beyond virtual meetings. A visceral long-term strategy with Magic Room and new capabilities brought with the Microsoft integration, coupled with new features in Horizon Workrooms - the multiple virtual monitors (pictured above) was cool - are somewhat of an exciting step forward. It’s exciting in the sense that it’s new and the novelty is certainly there, but there is nothing about what’s been announced that has yet offered any convincing case that metaverse-driven work is better than what can be achieved in the 2D world.

It’s difficult to imagine how teams split between the virtual and physical will be able to collaborate on the same Word document, for example, as easily as they could through a simple SharePoint collaboration that can be accomplished easily and effectively in the current iteration of Teams. Collaboration may benefit, sure. But is this small element of work worth all this effort?

The future of metaverse technology is bright - Meta will make sure of it. However, very real doubts remain over whether it will be useful for all, or even just the majority, and going forwards Meta will need to continue to maintain the excitement before disbelief truly takes hold.

With hybrid working the norm, the need to remotely access both PCs and servers is becoming ever more common. Few home workers have the necessary skills to diagnose and remedy their own problems, and enterprise support departments frequently lack the resources they'd need to visit them on-site. In such instances, remote control or monitoring can bridge the divide.

But it's not only in enterprises where remote control software has an important role to play. Single board computers, whether Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or otherwise, are becoming more capable by the month, with many headless devices now running full GUI-based operating systems. Enabling remote control allows them to be administered from a desktop, either on the same network or thousands of miles away. Remote intervention can likewise be a demonstration platform, allowing trainers to perform steps on a delegate's machine while that delegate sits and watches – and home workers can use it to access resources on an office PC.

It's fortunate, then, that this is an area well served by a wide range of client/server pairings. Many are entirely free to use, and several of those that don't offer complimentary tiers for a capped number of enrolled machines. Before we pick out five of the best, here's what you need to consider when choosing the right free remote control software for your business.

Best free remote desktop software

How many machines do you need to control?

Remote control software uses a client-server model; a small application on the remote host grants access to a matching client utility on your local machine. It doesn't matter when you have just one or a hundred remote machines to administer: the software at either end of the link will often be the same. The differentiator, then, is your subscription, which will usually determine not only which features are unlocked, but how many computers can be enrolled through a single account.

Enrolling a machine makes it easy to find on the network – or, if it's not on site, across the wider Internet. That way, if its IP address changes, you won't need to look it up on a DHCP table. Instead, it will continue to appear in the list of machines tied to your account, so you can connect to it with a couple of clicks and a password or a key pair.

It isn't always necessary to enrol a machine at all. Some options, like Chrome Remote Desktop and AnyViewer, let you set up a temporary connection using a displayed code. Likewise, where the operating system on your guest machine has native VNC support (or similar), and the host machine is running a compatible server, you may be able to connect using the host's LAN or remote hostname without resorting to third-party tools. Often, such connections are enabled within the operating system itself.

However, while temporary or ad-hoc connections of this sort are generally suitable for home users with a familiar LAN topography, they are less suited to business use, where the network under management will usually be more complex and widely distributed. At this point, the number of machines you can enrol on your free account takes on greater relevance.

Do you need to transfer files?

File transfer is a premium feature for some remote control platforms. Others don't offer it at all. If you need to move files between devices, therefore, either select a platform that offers this, or make alternative arrangements, like cloud transfer, local network sharing, or SFTP.

Among our selection, AnyViewer is one of the most flexible when it comes to file transfers, with this feature unlocked on the free tier when you register an account. NoMachine also has a very clear implementation, allowing for two-way drag-and-drop, rather than managing file transfers through a dialog.

Would Secure Shell do the job?

Full remote control can be overkill for some jobs – in particular if the task at hand can be accomplished at the remote command line. Much of what you may want to do on a Linux machine or server, for example, can be more quickly achieved using secure shell (SSH), which you can access at the command prompt in Windows, macOS, or Linux.

The latest builds of Windows 10 and Windows 11 also include a built-in SSH server, extending the technology beyond its traditional domain. It should be noted, however, that at the time of writing the server element remains a 'preview feature' (see SSH in Windows Terminal).

Best free remote desktop software 2025

AnyViewer

App-based remote control client and server

• Platform(s): Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

REASONS TO BUY

• Easy setup
• Quickfire controls
• Built-in chat system

REASONS TO AVOID

• Some features only for paid tiers

If you just want to make an ad-hoc connection, setup is refreshingly simple: install the AnyViewer app on both the local and remote machines, and type the server's on-screen code into the client window. It couldn't be any easier – unless you want to transfer files between your devices, in which case you'll need to set up an account. This is free, and it simultaneously registers your first two devices (the server and client). You can add one further machine for free before you'll need to upgrade. Once registered, connections to your remote machine are persistent. So, you can easily reconnect in the future, even if they've moved to different networks, and you'll no longer need to type in the on-screen code. This latter point is particularly important, as it means you can access an unattended machine, without needing someone in the vicinity to wake it up and read you the code over the phone.

The viewer window has a series of handy buttons, covering not only the aforementioned file sharing, but direct access to the remote command prompt and task manager, quick shut down and restart, and resolution settings. If the host machine's native resolution is larger than the guest machine's display, it can be downscaled, or you can remotely shrink it. You also have control over the client's refresh rate, colour mode (mono is an option), and image quality.

Finally, there's a built-in chat system, allowing operators at either end of the connection to send messages. A feature like this is particularly useful when using remote access to diagnose problems or for training. It's also neatly implemented, with an option to shrink the chat window to a tab on the edge of the host machine's screen so it keeps out of the way.

Chrome Remote Desktop

Browser and plug in-based

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS

REASONS TO BUY

• Simple setup
• Tight security controls

REASONS TO AVOID

• No file sharing

You can set up Chrome Remote Desktop for your own use – with a persistent link – or to give temporary access to a remote support agent. Do the latter and they'll have limited time to access your machine and, once they log off or you close your browser, they'll not be able to return without explicit re-authorisation from yourself.

It may well have one of the simplest setups going. The most important element is a browser that supports WebRTC at either end of the connection, and you'll also need to install the Chrome Remote Desktop extension on the host machine. Once you've done that and logged in to your Google Account on both machines, point both browsers at remotedesktop.google.com to get started.

To grant third-party temporary access, click Remote Support in the sidebar, followed by Generate Code, and give the number that appears to whoever needs access (you if you're at the remote machine). Once a number has been generated, it remains valid for five minutes; if it's not used in this time, it expires and you'll need to start the process again. Likewise, each code is single use. So, if you're granted access to a remote machine this way, and the connection is cut, whether deliberately or by accident, it won't work for a second time: a new code must be issued.

If you're setting up a machine for your own use, you needn't issue a number every time. Instead, click Remote Access in the sidebar, and every machine registered to your account will appear. Click that device, enter the PIN you specified during set-up, and the link is established. You don't need to know where that machine is on the LAN or Internet: Chrome Remote Desktop takes care of that for you.

While it lacks file sharing, there are ways around that, like using the remote connection to upload a file to cloud storage from the remote machine, or send it by email. All in all, this is a lightweight, easy-to-use, and very elegant solution.

NoMachine

App-based remote control client and server

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, ARM

REASONS TO BUY

• Built-in whiteboard, screen recording and screen grabbing, and a chat tool.

REASONS TO AVOID

• No remote server access on the free tier

NoMachine is unusual in having started as a Linux application that expanded to cover Windows and macOS machines. It's free for personal use with a cap of one concurrent connection. The client application, which is also available for Android and iOS mobile devices, will search your LAN for machines running NoMachine server, saving you the need to manually connect or know their IP address in advance. Connections are secured using the remote machine's regular login credentials or you can send a connection request from the client to be actioned on the server – assuming someone is sitting in front of it.

Once connected, you can interact with the remote machine as if you were sitting in front of it, scale the viewer window, and stream audio and video – with support for H264. There's a built-in whiteboard, screen recording and screen grabbing, and a chat tool. The latter could come in handy if you're connecting to remotely diagnose problems with the machine's regular user sitting at the keyboard, or for remote training.

NoMachine supports wake-on-LAN, USB device forwarding, and drag and drop file transfers in both directions. All traffic is encrypted. What you don't get if you're using the free tier – aside from support, which isn't surprising – is remote server administration and management, SSH support, and desktop access via the browser, among some other business-focused features. However, we think most home users will be able to manage without these, making NoMachine an excellent option for accessing rarely touched machines, like music and file servers.

Raspberry Pi Connect

Browser-based remote control

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Raspberry Pi (ARM)

REASONS TO BUY

• Well-documented setup process

REASONS TO AVOID

• Few platform options

Raspberry Pi OS used to include a free non-commercial licence for RealVNC, but that stopped working for a while with Raspberry Pi's move to the Wayland display server in October 2024. Fortunately, a solution had been rolled out almost six months earlier, in the form of Raspberry Pi Connect – a browser-based remote access tool through which you can register a whole fleet of single board computers to use headless, both on your own network and beyond. The Connect server works on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm and later.

Setup takes place at the terminal prompt, but don't let that put you off: it's well thought-out (and well documented) and requires just a couple of commands: update your distribution, install Connect, and turn it on. If you're using the GUI, you can activate it via the menu bar and, when it's up and running, you can give your device a unique name, at which point it will be registered to your Raspberry Pi account.

Now, visit connect.raspberrypi.com from your local machine and, so long as you're logged in to the same account, you'll see your registered Pi devices and can connect to either the GUI or remote shell (you can disable either or both of these from the host machine). If you're using the GUI, you can copy from or paste to the remote clipboard using buttons at the top of the browser window. If you want to transfer files, you'll need to do it using the remote shell.

When using devices where every byte and processor cycle count, a native solution like this is very welcome. It also does much to simplify the process of administering devices with very specific use cases, which may be deployed in awkward or otherwise inaccessible locations.

RealVNC Lite

App-based server and client remote control

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi (ARM)

REASONS TO BUY

• Easy to use

REASONS TO AVOID

• No file sharing function

While RealVNC is primarily a commercial offering, it has a free ('lite') plan allowing non-commercial remote access to personal devices. You can register up to three Windows, macOS, or Linux devices and access them one at a time.

You'll need to install RealVNC Server on your host machine, and RealVNC Viewer on the remote guest. With both logged in to the same RealVNC account, the Viewer will show your registered machines, whether they're on the same LAN or remote, making sign-in a one-click process, even if the remote machine has been issued with a fresh IP address.

You can set encryption to 128- or 256-bit, and choose from a variety of credential options, including your host machine's user password or a dedicated VNC password (in our tests, we chose the latter). When the link is live, there's a neat control bar at the top of the client window that drops down when you hover over the border. This contains quick links to settings and can send a ctrl-alt-del combo, but some other options on the bar, like file transfer, were disabled on our Lite account.

As with Chrome Remote Desktop, you could get around this limitation by copying files to a cloud drive within the remote window, or sending them by email from the remote email client. However, also bear in mind that AnyViewer allows for transfers between machine to any user with a free account, while also offering the same three-machine cap as RealVNC Lite.

How to choose the best free remote desktop software for you

The first thing to remember when selecting one of these pieces of software is that many of them tend to be fairly similar and simple. This could mean that not all of the free remote desktop programs are able to support multiple users. If this is a dealbreaker for you, it could be worth taking a look at packages like TightVNC or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Security is an important feature to take into account, with AnyDesk excelling particularly well at it. Always take into account which operating system, or systems, you’ll need to deploy it on and make sure that the program is compatible.

It’s useful to not forget that these programs are available for free. This means they probably won’t contain all the features you need and might not be fancy. We recommend trying out some of the programs we’ve covered and see which one works the best for you.

Interested in learning more about remote desktop technology and platforms? Then take a look at our variety of content on the topic, including how to use Microsoft Remote Desktop, what TeamViewer offers, learning about XRDP, and how to use Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Technology plays a vital role in helping government and public sector organisations respond to challenges and deliver services to the public, and in increased use of digital tools can unlock new capabilities and efficiencies. One somewhat unique example of this is the Welsh government, which must meet certain standards to ensure that the Welsh language is treated equally to English.

As well as providing Welsh-language options in its apps and services, this also includes supporting Welsh speakers in meetings, and the Welsh government has been working with Microsoft on the ability to include live translation in Teams calls via human interpreters. Joining us this week to discuss the opportunities this provides for bilingual organisations, as well as how the Welsh government is using technology to enable its digital strategy, is Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer for the Welsh Government.

Highlights

“So when the pandemic hit, we were just going through the transition as many people were, I think, into Teams… So our chief technology officer at the time immediately said to Microsoft, right, how are we going to get on the roadmap for Teams, that we can provide bilingual meetings, and we've led this dialogue with Microsoft; I understand that we're the country that have been driving this the most.”

“We've been doing a lot of work with Bangor University and other people around developing the language sets and the training data to improve the natural language processing and the artificial intelligence around this. So eventually, you will hopefully be able to have speech to text translation, so the subtitles will appear in whatever language you want them to do. And once you've got that, you can use the automated translation facility to translate to whatever language you want.”

“When we fund those kinds of language technology developments, another thing we're clear about is that we expect the resources and data to be released under open licence. So that means the training data can be shared with other companies. And they can add Welsh into their services. So we're very keen that as in terms of public money, when we're investing into this, we're investing in open licences.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• What is natural language processing?
• Microsoft unveils 'largest ever' AI natural language model
• How coronavirus has accelerated the digital transformation of Britain's public sector
• What is open source?
• Microsoft Teams review: A no-brainer for Microsoft shops
• Microsoft bolsters Teams platform with host of call quality improvements
• Slack Connect vs Microsoft Teams Connect: Better than email?
• Welsh gov reveals plans for 5G, cyber security testbeds
• IT vacancies in England and Wales up 105% in 2021
• Google demos real-time speech to text translation
• Zoom acquires AI translation startup Kites
• Speak easy: How neural networks are transforming the world of translation

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This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Enabling bilingual business’. We apologise for any errors.

Adam Shepherd

Hi, I'm Adam Shepherd.

Rory Bathgate

And I'm Rory Bathgate.

Adam

And you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast. But before we get into this week's episode, I've got some news that I'd like to share. And that is that this will be my last episode of the podcast. As of next week, I'll be leaving IT Pro for pastures new. But don't worry, I'll be leaving you in the capable hands of Rory, who will be manning the helm after I'm gone. And he'll be joined by our erstwhile co host Jane when she makes her triumphant return later this year.

Rory

Thanks, Adam. You will be greatly missed, but I know that you've got great things in store. And in the meantime, I'm excited to helm the podcast and look forward to the return of Jane.

Adam

Yeah, it's it's gonna be good to hear Jane back on the podcast when she gets back later in the year.

Rory

I know that longtime listeners will be happy to have Jane back as one of the co hosts.

Adam

Now on to the main event of this week's podcast we are going to be looking at technology use in government. Governments around the world are incredibly reliant on technology, not just to increase their own operational efficiency in the same way that every organisation is, but also as a vehicle for delivering digital platforms and services to their citizens.

Rory

Making effective use of this technology can be a tough balancing act. But when done right, it can offer transformative results for both government employees and the general public. This week, we're joined by an IT leader who has been navigating the challenges of this task. Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer for the Welsh Government, Glyn, thanks for coming on the show.

Glyn Jones

Bore da. Mae'n fendith bod yma heddiw. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here this morning.

Adam

It's a pleasure to have you. So Glyn, what role does technology play in delivering services to the people of Wales?

Glyn

Yeah, so we have set out our ambitions around using digital technology and digital services through our digital strategy for Wales, which was published back in March 2021. Now, we saw during the pandemic, how using technology and digital had become basically critical to providing services to people in Wales. So we wanted to capitalise on the momentum that we've seen during the pandemic, and set out an ambition for really transforming how citizens received public services in Wales. And to do that, by the use of digital ways of working and technology. The digital strategy really sets out a vision for world class public services to be delivered with the user at the centre of the design. And to really try and give the public the experience from public services that they get from their online shopping and their online banking. It's a big ambition, you know, we've got a long way to go. But what we've been able to do since we set out that digital strategy is really build some momentum, build some excitement around what we're doing in Wales. Under the strategy, we set up a new body called the Centre for digital public services, who were given the task to be leaders, to work with public authorities and central governments to understand digital and technology, to help them use digital and technology better in delivering those critical services to the people in Wales.

Rory

So as part of this move, you've recently been involved in a project with Microsoft, which allows organisations to use live human interpreters to translate between different languages during Teams meetings; could you expand a bit more on that project and how it fits into the wider strategy?

Glyn

Yeah, so this is a really important project for us, and our digital strategy. So Wales is a bilingual nation, about one in five people speak Welsh. In the last census, there was 560,000 people. And we've got an ambitious strategy around the use of Welsh language, we want to double the use of Welsh language on a daily basis by 2050. We also want to increase the number of Welsh speakers to a million by 2050. But we understand that as part of that, we need to make sure digital technology is supportive of those aims. As a bilingual nation, obviously, we want to be able to give people the opportunity to use Welsh wherever they want to and that means in official business with government, and also for our own staff to be able to work bilingually. Prior to the pandemic, we were all meeting face to face mostly. So you could deliver those bilingual meetings by having a physical translator or interpreter in the room and we'd all wear headsets, or those people who couldn't speak Welsh would wear headsets to make sure they got a bilingual feed into their ears. The pandemic hit. We all shifted to work from home. We all started using online video conferencing platforms. And, you know, the immediate question came, well, how do we make sure we continue to have bilingual ways of working? How do we make sure we allow citizens and our partners to engage with us in Welsh, and how do we meet the statutory standards we have in Wales, while whilst we're all working from home and working remotely. And that ranges from the internal meetings we would have within Welsh Government to meetings we would have with our partners and our stakeholders to meetings our ministers would have with people. And it's really important for us that we provide a provision for bilingual meetings, because not only do we need to do it, but it's the right thing to do, because meetings will become far better and more productive; people are able to engage in the language of choice. So when the pandemic hit, we were just going through the sort of transition as many people were, I think, into Teams, Teams became our sort of day to day core business. So our chief technology officer at the time, immediately said to Microsoft, right, Microsoft, how are we going to get on the roadmap for Teams, that we can provide bilingual meetings, and we've led this dialogue with Microsoft, I understand that we're the country that have been driving this the most. It's really an example of where we as a country want to support the global efforts to provide bilingual services working with those big companies to do so. So Microsoft picked us up, understood the requirements through through the regular dialogue between ourselves and our Welsh language technology colleagues, as well. And started showing us some wireframes, prototypes, and it was all looking good. They involved us in the test circle at quite an early stage, that was about Christmas last year. And through doing that, we were able to provide them with people like me, who are Welsh speakers, translators interpreters, other public sector bodies, who could work with Microsoft to be part of the development journey, and to help test the features and to improve and iterate to make sure that by the time the product landed, it was it was fit for purpose, and it would meet the requirements we all have. And happy to say that it's now in general availability, we've we've just had it released to our to our staff in the past week or so. So really excited about how this functionality can help us have conduct our business bilingually, conduct business bilingually with partner organisations, it is not just a thing for the public sector, private sector will also be able to use it. And it's also not just about the Welsh language. It's agnostic of language, it literally provides you with the opportunity to have multiple audio feeds in Teams. And I understand from Microsoft that they can handle up to 16 languages in a particular meeting.

Adam

Wow. I mean, this obviously unlocks a lot of potential for international business generally. In terms of the bilingual aspects, were there any other countries or territories that you took inspiration from in terms of their approach to leveraging technology to deliver bilingual services and experience? I mean, Canada is the obvious example that springs to my mind in terms of a country that operates bilingually by by default.

Glyn

Yes, my colleagues in the Welsh language division within Welsh Government, I think they've got quite a lot of good contacts across the world with those kinds of countries, particularly where, where there are countries with minority languages. So you're talking about areas such as the Basque region, and Catalonia. And so on. So what we hope to do through this is provide, in a sense, provide a driver for Microsoft to make a change, which will impact on others. And if they're doing the same as well, then that's great. My understanding is on this particular one, we were the we were the leaders, Microsoft told us we were the ones pushing it. But yeah, if you if you look at how the EU Parliament runs, or the United Nations, and you see there that those those proceedings happen, regardless of what language people want to speak. And we just need to be able to get that same sense within Wales, that regardless of what language you can speak, you can contribute to a meeting, and you don't need to worry about the technology. And I just think this is a real game changer now, and actually, despite us being over the past few years found it difficult to retain the sort of everyday use of Welsh that within within a corporate environment, you miss the corridor conversations you might have in Welsh, you will certainly have missed those formal meetings, which won't have happened so frequently through Welsh, we will actually come out of this with a set of technology, which will actually be a game changer for us and the rest of the world and being able to truly have bilingual meetings where you may be the only Welsh speaker in the room, but you can contribute in Welsh and colleagues around the around the table will be able to understand what you're saying and have that dialogue with you.

Rory

You're looking to break down these language barriers to the extent that in the long term when this system is working perfectly, you're barely thinking about the technology when when you're in the meeting itself.

Glyn

Yeah, absolutely. So this is, in a sense, providing what Teams, what the new functionality in Teams does now is provide you with an audio stream. So if there's an interpreter in the room, if you're a non Welsh speaker, you can, you can choose the audio feed you want to listen to. So as soon as I start speaking Welsh, my audio will dip and you will hear the interpreter talk in English. So that's fine, that's great. But that still requires an interpreter in the room to do the manual translation. And that's a really important step. But I see it very much as a stepping stone. So we've been doing a lot of work with Bangor University and other people around developing the language sets and the training data to improve the natural language processing and the artificial intelligence around this. So eventually, you will hopefully be able to have speech to text translation, so the subtitles will appear in whatever language you want them to do. And once you've got that, you can use the automated translation facility to translate to whatever, whatever language you want, which, which again, will then hopefully, you know, it may not be the case for every meeting, because for every for some formal meetings, you will certainly want that manual translation, but if it's just a meeting within the office, you know, some of the automated translation will certainly be good enough to help people, what we then need to do is get people to build the confidence in doing so. So as as a Welsh speaker, I know that if you're in a room with other English speakers, you've got to have the confidence to say no, I'm going to use Welsh, and you are going to have to use whatever tools there are to, to have that conversation with you. And I think there's a business change element to this. There's a communication and a cultural element to bilingual ways of working, which goes beyond the technology. And that's, that's in a sense, our next step, now that we have the technology, we really want to make those meetings as effective as possible. So for example, even even before this has launched this week, on on a Teams chat, we could already translate from Welsh to English in text through the automated Microsoft translate; not many people are using that, people still default to put in the Teams chat in English rather than Welsh. So how do we change the culture? How do we get people confident enough to be able to have bilingual meetings? How do we get the chair of a meeting to encourage that to happen? So it's very much as much of a behavioural and cultural thing as it is technology.

Adam

I was gonna say, I was quite surprised, given Microsoft's heavy investment in AI, that this system is leveraging human interpreters, rather than AI translation software for, for default, it seems like a kind of natural comfort zone for Microsoft particularly to to go straight for AI rather than the human element. So it's, it's sort of not surprising that that's the the end goal, if you like is to incorporate AI elements alongside human translators.

Glyn

Yeah, that's definitely the case. So now our requirement was for human interpretation. Because, you know, we know there's still a journey to go on artificial intelligence and getting it right. So it's really important for us to make sure we have that human element to this right now. And that will certainly be the way most meetings happen for the for the short term. The long term aim has to be to do that. And of course, a lot of that does depend on the training data and the maturity of the the algorithms they have available. Now working I think I said with Bangor University on this, they have, they have released a transcriber to produce automatic subtitles for Welsh videos. So it is happening, but we need to make sure the quality and so on is is right. When we fund those kinds of language technology developments, another thing we're clear about is that we expect the resources and data to be released under open licence. So that means the training data can be shared with other companies. And they can add Welsh into their services. So we're very keen that as in terms of public money, when we're investing into this, we're investing in open licences. We've been working with Amazon Web Services as well. They've released recently a dataset called MASSIVE in capital letters, which is natural language data. And you know, we were really pleased that they engaged with us. And actually, Welsh is one of the 51 languages that they've used in that dataset. So I think the more of those training datasets we get out there, the more natural language material and resources are out there openly, you know, the better this will get in the future.

Rory

And it's, as you said earlier, where with this public funding, with this open source goal always, the hope is that in the future, it could it could benefit multiple languages, multiple countries that are currently seeing this this language barrier impacting on public and private services.

Glyn

Yeah, Absolutely, absolutely, the more languages we use, the more interoperable we'll be and the more we can retain and promote those minority languages, to sustain those languages, but not only just to sustain them, as I said at the start in terms of the number of speakers, but actually the language is used, because a language that's thriving is a language that's living, I think, is how we say; I may, I may have reflected our policy aims slightly wrong here. But you get my gist; a language has to be living to be thriving, and you want to be able to use the language. And I'm sure many other countries are facing the same challenge of keeping the number of speakers but also making sure people have the ability to use them in an increasingly global world.

Adam

So Glyn, looking at the the technology side of this, what benefits have you seen from having this technology built directly into the Teams platform? For example, do you find that having it directly there has increased the effectiveness and the adoption of Teams and other digital services within your organization's?

Glyn

Yes, so I mean, as I said, it's just hit general availability. So in terms of the usage, we will now be putting out in terms of our organisation, guidance and material on how best to use it. But this is the important thing for us. So I, to be fair, Zoom have had a facility over the past two years, that's been really, really important for many organisations have been able to deliver some bilingual meetings, but Zoom didn't meet all of our requirements. And part of that was because we are a Microsoft house, we have Microsoft embedded in our day to day work. So all of our meetings are Teams, and therefore having it embedded into everyday, everyday working is really important, particularly for that behavioural change thing I mentioned, if we're going to add barriers for people to go off to another product, to be able to facilitate bilingual meetings, then those are going to be barriers that mean it doesn't happen so well. And if you think about the wider wraparound feeling of a meeting, the invitation, the chat, that has the for me, it's looking at as a whole sort of bilingual experience. And that can only be done for us and other public organisations by having it embedded into Teams, it obviously also then helps us interact with the other uses we all make of Teams around Teams channels and records management and so on. So having that really embedded into our work is is crucial to allow it to be natural and the norm within an organisation I think.

Adam

Cause I'd imagine, I'm not sure which way round this, this is more likely to work. But I would imagine that either having the services available in Welsh or with Welsh kind of support built in makes people more likely to use them? Or maybe it's the other way around that having having the Welsh support makes people more likely to use Welsh. Maybe both?

Glyn

Yeah, so I think the the important is you make it as frictionless as possible for somebody to use whatever language they want. So for example, if you're using a government website, and you're in your lead into a, an English website, it shouldn't be 10 clicks, then to try and find another, a Welsh or another language, it should be as seamless as possible. Ideally, you should have given that choice as soon as you land on the website, what language do you want to interact with the service in, that's what happens in cash points in Wales. So if you go to a cash point in Wales, if whenever you are getting cash out these days, which I think is increasingly rare, you get the option of choosing English or Welsh first, then you get, so you don't have to physically make a change. And as a Welsh speaker, you don't have to do anything extra to get the Welsh. And that's what we want bilingual services to be like, and if you make as frictionless as possible, you just encourage people to use them. And people will have the confidence that there is a good bilingual service here that I can feel confident that the Welsh version is going to be right. I'm not going to go five screens down and then just find an English version because hasn't been translated or nobody's really thought of the end to end process as a bilingual process. So yeah, very much, let's make it as easy as possible. And, you know, as I said, let's let's go get this technology to be the norm that they're offering Welsh as part of that offer, wherever you are, I mean, there is no reason some of the stuff couldn't couldn't be global. So, for example, I was just really pleased at some point in the past few years that I went to McDonald's in England, and they offered Welsh as a language for their online orderings screen. Why wouldn't you? Because they've they've put the effort to do that in Wales. So why would you not that then incorporate that into your sort of online... I'm doing the thing, sorry, not very good for radio. If you've put the effort to put the technology in, in Wales to provide the digital menu offering in Welsh, why wouldn't you then just use that in other parts of the UK? Right?

Adam

And that's the beauty of digital systems in particular, they're so highly extensible. You know, you can something like, you know, language support, for example, can be super easily lifted and shifted across, you know, across your ordering systems all over the world.

Glyn

Absolutely.

Rory

On that point of digital systems, and you mentioned government websites, I know that the Government Digital Service has announced a plan to shift towards one login for gov.UK, that kind of centralization of services. Is this centralization of services across government websites, does that tie in to this kind of frictionless system of translation? Is the end goal down the line a system where someone could log on to a government website, and through one system, be able to access everything without as you're saying, having to go down steps to have everything translated?

Glyn

Yeah, I think that's that's got to be the ambition. So the one login for government is a UK government project at the moment, but we're working closely with them, we're feeding into the thinking around that. And one of the one of the things we have been pushing on is because the UK government deliver services in Wales as well as well as Welsh Government do, you need to make sure that one login for government reflects the Bilingual Services and bilingual service designed from the start. So that's the sort of, in a sense, the outward facing bit of it, which is really important. But Rory, you're right, and actually the end goal here, so we have this concept in Wales that you should, that you should be able to give a language preference. And that's the preference. That's, that's the language you want to do business with that organisation in. Ideally, you know, if you've told governments, you want to want to work with them in Welsh, as you said Rory, that that should become the norm then for when you're accessing services, I think we've got a long way to go. But as I say, we're engaging with the one login for government and trying to work out what it means for services in Wales, but that has to be the ideal is that you, you, your default language is Welsh, and therefore you get offered their services in Welsh, we're also really keen for example, for that to happen within the Microsoft environment itself as well. So if you can establish yourself as a Welsh speaker through the Microsoft Active Directory, you get the the Welsh interface and everything else, by default. At the moment, you have to then sort of go extra and install it and so on. So I think that that's definitely got to be the aim.

Adam

Yeah. And that extends, presumably, to just the small but impactful user experience tweaks such as like, in Word, for example, having the Welsh spellcheck dictionary automatically downloaded and activated.

Glyn

Yeah, absolutely. And some of that does happen already. And a lot of that is because of the work we've done with Microsoft over the years to embed Welsh into some of their packs. And the, you know, as I said, the Welsh language interface for Windows was something that we worked at Microsoft with quite a few years ago now. And we're really pleased when it was launched, but yeah still, you've got to put the effort in to make it as frictionless as possible. And then it's ensuring the sort of big vendors are keeping up with when they're investing in new technology, that we don't have to go through this, again, that it's a default that Welsh is a language that those sort of services and technologies are offered in. And, and from our point of view, you know, we want to highlight to them that if they want to do business in Wales, they have to provide those, provide the technology options to support Bilingual Services, because that's what public authorities in Wales need to have.

Rory

So moving from the public to the private sector, because I know that you mentioned that maybe as an ambition in the future, the private sector can benefit from this as well, is the idea that alongside the Welsh tech sector, so companies operating from Wales, based within Wales, being able to benefit from this in house, you're also looking at a benefit for big tech, shall we say, being able to have a frictionless experience with Welsh customers, with Welsh businesses? So it's a kind of a win win in that in that regard?

Glyn

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, the functionality in Teams now is is available to anyone who's subscribing to the normal Microsoft Teams package. So it will be provided under the normal general licence which is great so they don't have to invest extra in this functionality. So from that point of view, private sector will be able to benefit just as much as us. More generally, you know, in our digital strategy and our Welsh language technology action plan, we're really keen to promote businesses thriving in Wales in digital sectors. And the more they do that, obviously, they will benefit from providing services in Wales, people in Wales will benefit from those organisations. Working from Wales, having good digital capability in Wales. As you've sort of said, Rory, it'll also feed off each other and it's a win win. Those big vendors, I know they have have a customer base. And well, Welsh speakers are one of the customer bases, and my job and my colleagues in the Welsh language technology team. I'll name check Jeremy Evas and Gareth Morlais, who do fantastic work on this, our job is to make sure those vendors hear us and understand the requirements for Wales, and where there's a will for them to work with us, as we've shown with Amazon and Microsoft, now, we're here to work with them, you know, we we know that they'll need some support to understand requirements. And I think we've demonstrated how keen we are to to do that for the benefit of everyone.

Adam

Where there's a will there's a Wales, you might say. So looking at your own use of technology, then, how are you planning to expand on the use of digital tools within the Welsh Government in the future? You mentioned during the pandemic, you made a big shift over to teams to fuel that kind of more digitally transformed, kind of flexible, and more agile way of working? Are there any plans to kind of build on that with more or deeper use of these kinds of tools?

Glyn

Yeah, I mean, we will all have seen how we've just changed our ways of working in in two and a half years, and, you know, a number of massive benefits in terms of collaboration, and through using Teams channels, and other collaboration channels. Everybody working collectively, on particular projects. So we've had to do a lot of work over the past few months, obviously, on the Ukraine crisis, we're making really good uses of Teams channels there to work together and collaboratively and keep each other informed. One massive change we've seen is actually staff engagement with senior management, because instead of sort of, doing a tour of large government sites, and getting a few people come to a particular meeting room that would never house the five and a half thousand people working in Welsh government, we're now able to run live events, with our permanent secretary, ministers and senior managers talking directly to staff and we regularly have around half of our workforce logging into those things. And we see then from people survey results, the staff are feeling far more engaged than ever, they feel senior managers are far more visible than they ever were before. And they're just so easy to set up, aren't they? So, you know, so many benefits. So yeah, so the task I've been given is like, how do we how do we capitalise on that? How do we do better in the future? So we're trying to invest in a digital team to really look at some of our, you know, we're a central government department, we still have clunky ways of working, that's not a surprise. So we want to do better, we want to provide our staff with the kind of business processes and, and digital services that that we're trying to offer citizens out there that they get from their bank, as I said earlier, but that they should be getting within Welsh Government. So we want to really get to the bottom of where we see inefficiencies, where are we seeing the staff having to fill in five forms to do something, and to try and help automate, streamline that as much as possible. So yeah, so it's, it. It's just something that's part of our transformation plan for the for the next few years, and really excited. And actually, the feedback we get from staff is actually, you know, there's loads of things you could do, but actually focus on the basics, get your basic forms right, get your basic HR processes to be better and more online, help us collaborate externally. So those those are the kind of priorities we'll have for the next three years.

Rory

And that focus on collaboration that you've that you've highlighted and basic Employee Services, employees and contractors feeling seen within these channels. Just as you're enabling conversations through digital transformation, through translation, it feels like you're also enabling maybe transparency from the top down. Would you say that you've seen an increase in transparency as a result of transformation as well?

Glyn

Yeah, definitely, as I said, So senior managers are more visible than ever. And just through the digital channels, that engagement now so people feel, you know, back in the old days, we'd be in a room and senior managers would say their thing and some people would put their hands up and do they'd probably get to two or three questions during the day, now, you know, we can have the Q and A's, we can have the live polls, whatever it may be during during a live event, which really just supports that engagement, that collaboration, and also allows people to really, you know, put in the hard questions to senior managers, and to really understand what's going on in the organisation and, and wider. So yeah, definitely, I think it supported transparency as an organisation. I should have also said it, you know, very, the heart of what we do in public service in Wales is actually collaboration, it is our way of working, we are a small country, we have 22 local authorities and seven health boards. So we've always said, Well, you know, we can always all get in a room together to fix problems. And that's that has been true, but it does still require people from north Wales and South Wales to get in a room together somehow. But actually, collaboration, engagement with stakeholders, all of that has benefited from this new technology as well. And we will move back to face to face, but I don't think we'll ever now stop using virtual as a way of getting people together to collaborate, to work together on those problems in a much, much easier way than having to find a hotel room in mid Wales that we can, we can cram into, and have three months notice of it. So that collaboration across public services, we benefited from this. But I'd like to see how we can use digital technology to move that further, to have common common digital platforms, common digital services, share technology, as much as we can drive collaboration, integrated services, but also at the end of that, cost efficiencies so that we're doing things once and we're sharing components as much as we can.

Rory

So we've talked a lot about digital transformation in both the public and the private sector. How do you think this will impact the position of Wales as one of the UK's burgeoning tech hubs?

Glyn

Yeah, so whilst the focus of our digital strategy is on that public service aspect, and providing Systems Service, that's where we feel we wanted to really raise the bar, part of one of our missions is about the digital economy, building thriving sectors in Wales, and particular focus on areas such as FinTech and cyber, where we have really got strong sectors already, building on those. Really keen that through the digital strategy, and through developing our use of technology, we help people thrive within the Welsh economy. And that will help Wales as a sort of competitor within the UK but globally. And just going back to the theme of today, particularly that Welsh language aspect, you know, we feel that through the work we've done with Microsoft or our Cymraeg 2050 strategy through our Welsh language technology action plan, that that's an area where we really want to continue leading the way in terms of globally pushing for bilingual technology.

Adam

Well, I'm afraid that's it for this week's episode. But our thanks to the Welsh Government's Chief Digital Officer Glynn Jones for joining us.

Glyn

Diolch yn fawr iawn, thank you very much.

Adam

And that's also it for me. It's been an absolute delight co hosting the podcast for the last three years and I'd like to thank each and every one of our listeners for tuning in and putting up with my rambling. I hope you will continue to do so and I'm sure that the podcast is going to be better than ever without me dragging it down. If you'd like to know more about what I'll be doing next, you can follow me on Twitter at @AdamShepherdUK, but with that, I will hand over to Rory Bathgate, the IT Pro Podcast's official new host.

Rory

Thanks, Adam. You're a tough act to follow. And it's been my pleasure to share these last few episodes with you. I know that listeners will want to join me in wishing you the best for your future endeavours, which I hope won't take you too far from the world of podcasting which you've truly made your home.

Adam

Thank you very much.

Rory

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and don't forget to follow us on social media and subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts.

Toshiba and Accenture are collaborating to offer consulting services to support the green transformation (GX) efforts of the Japanese company’s clients.

The partnership is set to target industries with high greenhouse gas emissions and other organisations with urgent needs to improve energy efficiency, the companies said yesterday.

Accenture will work with the Japanese giant to design and develop new sustainability services to drive emission reductions, as well as strategies for carbon neutrality. It will also use its experience from implementing sustainable supply chain processes, like green procurement, as well as using cloud and other technology products from its partner ecosystem.

Toshiba will provide its carbon-neutrality technologies and services to the collaboration, including renewable energy systems, digital energy management systems, renewable energy-derived hydrogen solutions, and carbon dioxide capture and recovery facilities.

“We are pleased to launch GX consulting services with Accenture. Toshiba Group provides technologies and services that contribute to solving social issues through our wide range of businesses, guided by our basic commitment — Committed to People, Committed to the Future,” said Goro Yanase, representative executive officer, corporate senior executive vice president and COO at Toshiba. “We are now building on this by developing capabilities and solutions that will contribute to the realisation of carbon neutrality and a circular economy.

“Working with Accenture, we hope to further expand our business and contribute to the realisation of a carbon neutral society by providing consulting services that support companies with proposals extending from planning through to the achievement of carbon neutrality goals.”

Additionally, the Japanese company is hoping to achieve carbon neutrality throughout its entire value chain by 2050. It has set a preliminary goal for 2030 of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 2019 levels.

The two companies hope the partnership will help support clients’ emission reduction priorities. The pair will also evolve and refine their green transformation business model based on market trends and client needs.

Other organisations have been bolstering their green offerings recently as part of a sustainability drive. Google Cloud, for example, boosted its “Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability’ programme in September 2022, by adding 12 new partners. The expansion brought several new features including fleet routing, air quality management, and water scarcity.

The move helps to enhance Google Cloud’s capabilities and simplifies the adoption of technologies like Google Earth Engine and BigQuery, which it says will help clients lower their carbon footprints.

A new managed service provider, Espria, has launched as a combination of service providers Mode, eacs and Nix Telecom.

The newly-branded business offers firms integrated digital transformation, cloud services, communications and document solutions, and expert advice. Mode Solutions acquired eacs in June, following on from its acquisition of Nix Telecom. Together, the three companies’ areas of expertise combine for a unified channel experience.

Managed service providers (MSPs) work closely with their partners to operate essential infrastructure on their behalf, perform daily maintenance and security checks and assist them in their digital needs.

In particular, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can work with MSPs to reap benefits such as big data analytics and cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) without the need to invest in large infrastructure or IT teams of their own. A recent report by Dynatrace highlights the increasing strain that cloud complexity puts CIOs and IT teams under, and MSPs also help to shield businesses from these concerns.

“We want to empower our customers to be able to focus on their business, and not worry about the technology working,” said Espria CEO Alex Tupman.

“So we’re here to keep the lights on, and make improvements, digital transformation from pocket to cloud. We’re effectively bringing enterprise-grade IT to the SME market, everything from mobile device management all the way through to security and complex cloud infrastructures within an SME budget.”

With concerns around the cost of living crisis growing, big firms such as Twilio are making cuts to workforces. But a new report by Randstad suggests that for SMBs, the current economy provides a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to secure hires that bigger companies normally would, and many experts advise that good investment now could be key to surviving long-term.

Tupman stated that Espria is leaning into the headwind with a proactive investment approach: “I always think that it’s a good time to invest in digital technology, digital infrastructure, and digital transformation. It’s a challenging decision for any business to make, but we can bundle together all of our different capabilities which will ultimately bring about greater efficiencies for our customers.”

Mode has for some time offered ‘Simple’, their alternative to traditional MSP contracts, and Espria will continue to follow this model. In short, Simple runs on the principle that the company owns all of its own technology, which it offers to customers without the need for third-party hardware providers or technicians.

“Historically, and with the vast number of other suppliers, they will operate on a lease-and-service model. They will introduce a leasing company to the process, the customer leases the technology from that leasing company every month, but they also pay the supplier to service it, so there's two lots of relationships and twice the managing cost.

As an added benefit to the in-house control of cloud services, software and hardware, Espria also claims to boast better security and provide its customers with improved system oversight.

“One of the investments we have made is in a single pain monitoring tool across all devices. So we can offer performance management and a dashboard across the full suite of services,” stated Tupman. This also has an added benefit to security, as greater oversight prevents practices being overlooked through tool sprawl.

“We can offer a wrap around on services that a lot of vendors can’t,” noted Espria COO Clinton Groome.

Espria is an active company as of today, and its three different trading companies will come together as a single entity at the start of the company’s new financial year in 2023.

“We have a fully-functional board with a wealth of knowledge across all the technologies, skillsets, managed services. And we’re only going one direction, and that’s straightforward. We’re going to smash the market, and I have to say, we’re all eager to get this done,” said Groome.

Espria will outline its services and strategy in more detail on 22 November at Optimise IT, one of the largest independent forums in the country.

Content collaboration and governance platform Egnyte has detailed a trio of new additions for its packages for managed service providers (MSPs).

The enhancements include dedicated partner packages for industries such as architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), as well as snapshot-based ransomware recovery and simplified CMMC compliance.

In an announcement, Egnyte said it is continuing to invest in its growing partner programme to help provide solutions for MSPs that are designed specifically for their SMB clients.

Reinforcing this strategy, Canalys chief analyst Jay McBain said partners are playing a leading role as the world witnesses a “once in a generation shift” in the global economy.

“Most business leaders across every industry, of all size firms, and in every corner of the world are considering significant business model shifts,” he said. “They are realising that they can't do it alone in the decade of the ecosystem.”

With Egnyte, organisations can leverage a secure multi-cloud platform for content security and governance, helping them to better protect and collaborate on their most valuable content.

With the firm’s new enhancements, MSPs can now access industry-specific partner packages, such as its AEC offering which provides teams with Building Information Modelling (BIM) file search and preview, project lifecycle management, as well as integration with construction management platform Procore.

The firm’s snapshot-based ransomware recovery tool also enables customers to look back at a snapshot of a file to determine exactly when ransomware infected a file and restore data to that point.

Additionally, for companies that work for the U.S. Department of Defense, Egnyte’s CMMC solution also shortens the time it takes to comply with Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) standards.

Egnyte has already helped bolster cloud content security for more than 17,000 organisations. JP Keesy, owner of F1 Information Technologies said its partnership with the company has allowed it to better serve client partners, as well as navigate complex solutions such as CMMC.

"Working with a designated team of experts, the partner portal enhancements, and monthly enablement sessions, Egnyte understands and compliments our needs with the necessary support,” he said.

98% of organisations have skill gaps within their IT departments, and most senior leaders agree that hiring talented IT workers has never been harder, according to new research.

The IT Leaders Pulse Report 2022, which surveyed IT leaders from around the world, has revealed the extent of the talent gap problem in hiring, driven by the so-called ‘great resignation’ of 2020-1. 73% of respondents claimed that hiring within the sector is facing record difficulties, with the worst impacted areas including IT and solutions architecture and cloud and infrastructure management.

To fill vacant roles, and craft more effective teams, companies are increasingly looking to widen hiring search parameters. 80% of the surveyed leaders stated that they are seeking developer candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, as well as investing in reskilling.

MuleSoft, a subsidiary of Salesforce, produced the report from interviews with 1,000 IT leaders between June and July 2022, across nine countries.

As company strategies change, and digital transformation becomes a more widely accepted duty, firms are also focusing more on people over technologies and products. 86% of senior IT leaders in the survey indicated that the experience that a company provides to customers and employees alike is of equal importance to the products and services that it offers.

Beyond the problems presented by the skill gap, the report also highlights the widespread problem of friction between IT and business departments. The vast majority (98%) of IT leaders indicated that the relationship and working process between their department and business teams within the same organisation could be improved.

The creation of fusion teams, composed of employees from different departments working together to improve the efficiency of company processes, appears to be on the rise. 69% of firms indicate that they have either formed or are currently forming, fusion teams while 22% identify the task as a goal to achieve in the next 12 months. The downsizing and combining of teams is in part driven by internal strategy, but also external factors such as the incoming cost of living crisis, which analysts say will necessitate optimisation in IT teams.

Nearly two thirds of leaders say that fusion teams have helped with meeting objectives, increased innovation and boosted the satisfaction of employees and customers.

However, 62% of UK respondents stated that they are exploring automation to address the skills gap. This highlights the growing degree to which, faced with a talent drain, firms are turning to technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms to improve the customer experience. Despite the potential benefits of this approach, a majority (81%) of respondents stated that too much focus on leading-edge technologies caused complexity issues.

“Shifting economic headwinds are making technology even more fundamental to success across every part of the business, including sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT,” said Matt McLarty, global field CTO, MuleSoft.

“As IT leaders struggle to fill roles to support this additional demand, the traditional playbook is in question. Today's IT leaders must look instead to broader, company-wide process improvements, through automation, that foster innovation, enhance user experiences, and drive efficient growth."

NAS specialist Qnap has lately been expanding into new areas such as network switching. It’s now turning its attention to the SMB videoconferencing market with the KoiBox-100W. It’s a clever concept: a portable appliance that can operate as both an all-in-one conferencing solution and a wireless screen-sharing station for in-person presentations.

If you’re fed up with monthly subscriptions, there’s one feature you’ll like right away. Instead of charging a recurrent fee, the KoiBox is a one-off purchase with all licences included. That gets you support for the most popular conferencing platforms, including Skype, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The KoiBox will appeal equally to businesses that want to go off-grid, as it can provide private conferencing services too, with Qnap taking care of all user authentication and meeting connections.

Inside, the KoiBox is powered by a 1.8GHz Intel Celeron 6305 CPU, and it pipes 4K video out of a single HDMI port at the rear. Next to it sit four USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, to which you can connect cameras, speakers, microphones, a keyboard and mouse as required, plus a Gigabit Ethernet socket - although you may not need this as the KoiBox has built-in Wi-Fi 6.

You can’t see it, but there’s one final connector: an internal SFF drive bay, into which you can install an SSD to record your meetings. We were able to slot in and use a 1.92TB Micron SATA SSD with no fuss.

Setting up the KoiBox is very easy. You just connect it to a display and use the included remote-control handset to step through the onscreen setup wizard. This guided us through choosing a language, formatting the SSD and confirming our AV equipment as working (we tried both a Logitech ConferenceCam Connect and a Poly Studio P15 system, and had no problem with either).

Once setup is complete, the KoiBox presents a colourful homescreen from which you can access all functions using the remote. To share your screen from a PC you just need to enter the IP address of the appliance in Chrome or Firefox, select the wireless projection option and choose whether you want to cast the entire screen, a window or a browser tab.

Mobile screen sharing is supported, too: we tried the free KoiCast iOS app on an iPad. This immediately opened with a view of the KoiBox’s screen, allowing us to see what someone else was sharing, or begin a sharing session of our own.

Cloud meetings are easy to set up, especially if you’re using Microsoft Teams, as the KoiBox has native integration with this platform. After we’d assigned one of our Team user accounts to the KoiBox we were right away presented with the standard interface we all know and love.

For private video calls the appliance uses the KoiMeeter app – the same one as found on Qnap’s NAS appliances, but pre-registered so you don’t have to worry about time limits. Unhelpfully, the user manual neglects to explain how PC and Mac users can join private meetings, but it’s easily done – they just need to point a web browser at the KoiMeeter website and log in with their Qnap account. Remote participants get a picture-in-picture view in their browser, along with video and audio controls, a screen-sharing button and facilities to invite other users up to the maximum of four per meeting.

If remote users are logged into the KoiMeeter web service, they can also be invited to meetings directly from the KoiBox by entering their personal KoiCode. This is one reason you might want to connect a keyboard: the remote control works, but it’s tedious having to use it to flick through the onscreen dial-pad.

Mobile users can use the KoiMeeter app for iOS and Android to start meetings and accept requests from the KoiBox, or they can bypass the KoiBox entirely and use the app to conduct private meetings amongst themselves.

The KoiBox-100W is an intriguing alternative to the mainstream providers. Once you’ve added the cost of a 4K camera and audio equipment it isn’t much cheaper than a budget video bar, but it’s easy to set up and use, it will appeal to SMBs wanting private videoconferencing services, and the screen-sharing capabilities are a nice bonus.

Qnap KoiBox-100W specifications

Slack has announced an update to its Workflow Builder that adds new tools for automating tasks within channels and improvements to workflow visibility.

Chief among the additions to workflows is the ability to use conditional logic within the Workflow Builder. If-then statements, a stalwart of simple coding, will allow workflow creators to send users down paths depending on the answers they provide, streamlining workflows that can produce different results based on input conditions, such as holiday request forms. Slack expects this to be available in early 2023.

Other new features include tools for automatic channel creation and alerts to the operator of a workflow when it has received a request, as well as the expansion of steps that feed into Slack-integrated apps.

Users will now also be able to easily copy-and-paste workflow links into channels and direct messages. Once sent, the link will expand into a full workflow preview, which can be run directly and pinned in the channel for ease of access.

Workflow Builder is a tool within Slack, that allows users to create and customise a series of automated steps within their business’ Slack channels. For example, a workflow could be set up to send an automatic welcome message the first time a user is added to a channel, and provide useful onboarding links.

Since Slack introduced Workflow Builder in 2019, over 540 million workflows have been launched, and this has grown by more than 230% in just the last year. In a blog post announcing the update, the company stated that 10.5 million users run workflows in Slack each week.

Slack has taken a number of steps in the past few years to improve its productivity functions, and allow business users to do as much of their work as possible within the app, to reach their aim of being a ‘digital HQ’ for companies. This has included the introduction of Slack Connect for external business communication, or the upcoming release of multi-person screen sharing within huddles.

“This is part of our goal to make automation accessible for all users, period,” stated Steve Wood, the senior vice president of product, platform at Slack.

“These updates are happening at a critical time when businesses are watching their bottom line. When every minute counts, it’s important to bring the automation creation process closer to the people who are actually going to use it. That’s the measure of a successful digital HQ and where the magic happens.”

The trouble with emerging technologies is that, while they may open up exciting possibilities, it’s often hard to see what on Earth you can use them for today. The metaverse is a great example: it has real practical potential, but Mark Zuckerberg makes it sound like sci-fi.

With the rise of the metaverse comes the importance of metaverse security, and adjusting to this rather novel trend. I’m not here to offer yet another explanation of what the metaverse is all about. Instead, I want to share my own experiences of going live with this technology.

They’re based on six years of experiments, recently culminating in helping a financial institution take its first tentative steps into the metaverse. The company’s goal was to facilitate stronger collaboration among remote team members, while cutting travel costs, and hopefully reducing office costs – and no doubt those are things you’d like to achieve too.

1. It’s not “the” metaverse

There’s no single, universal metaverse just yet. What we have is lots of little miniverses. Those might one day join together to form “the” metaverse, but right now some are better than others at different things. Being clear about this is important, because, along with sourcing your headsets, picking your metaverse platform is the very first order of business.

Two popular choices are Spatial and Kazendi, and there are good reasons to like both. However, in our recent rollout we opted for some corporate-expensed Oculus headsets in combination with RecRoom. You might be put off by the perception that RecRoom is mostly aimed at kids, but, to quote one of our execs, “most of the really important business gets done over a round of golf”. In the metaverse, nine holes of virtual golf can be squeezed into just an hour, and it’s much better for your carbon footprint than driving to Sunningdale.

Don’t get locked into one favoured platform, though. Just as you might switch between Linkedin and Twitter, or Zoom and Teams, I’ve found that different people prefer different virtual reality (VR) platforms. As the champion of the technology, you’ll need to be on top of each system’s controls and capabilities, as they’re all different.

Incidentally, don’t anticipate that you can just buy a lot of shared headsets either. One chief technology officer (CTO) told me that she felt a VR headset was a much more personal device than a smartphone, laptop or webcam, and that she wouldn’t be comfortable using one that had been worn by another team member for a few months.

2. Pick your team

One of my first metaverse experiences came when I spoke at a conference for Daz 3D – one of the visual effects platforms behind Westworld. While some of the technology on show was super-impressive, I was surprised by how detached I found the experience. When you’re interacting in the metaverse with someone you don’t know in real life, it can feel as if they’re a computer game character, even though you know intellectually that the avatar you see is controlled by another real human being.

Ed Blake, CTO at Waverton, later told me he’d felt the same thing: the lack of facial expressions and emotions in current avatars made it a very different experience for him to Zoom. In a video conference you can pick up a huge amount from body language and facial expressions, but in the metaverse you have to pay a lot more attention to the sound of other users to detect how they are feeling and reacting to what you say.

If you’re working with a group of people who don’t all know one another, therefore, it’s best to start with a non-VR ice-breaker session. While you want to keep things professional, a party-game approach can help: the more that your group feels like they know each other in the real world, the better they’ll be able to communicate and work together online.

3. Activities and familiarisation

Once you’ve chosen your early adopter group, you need to get them through their first experience in the metaverse. Start by creating an environment where people are free to explore how VR works: set them some tasks, and give them time to figure out the controls and discover what they can do.

Don’t rush this. People often need a while to get accustomed to the fact that everyone has god-like powers in a metaverse. I’ve seen otherwise productive sessions be spoiled when people are tempted to try out abilities such as creating, throwing and resizing objects in the middle of a meeting.

While your initial orientation session may be fun, make clear that it has a serious purpose. I’ve battled with senior stakeholders who couldn’t get past the idea that VR is only for games, because they weren’t presented with a plan at the outset.

4. Get serious

For your first proper meeting, lay down some ground rules. Treat it like a real meeting, with no larking about and no playing with avatars. Try to anticipate “how do I do this?” requests – we all know how irritating it is when people can’t find the Mute button in a Teams call.

Keep the first session short; 20 minutes is plenty while you’re trying to get your team up to speed with the technology and its capabilities. an interactive PowerPoint presentation, for example, in the virtual space might be the perfect introduction. Let me emphasise that VR isn’t the right medium for a PowerPoint presentation, in the same way that a telephone call isn’t the right way to give a software demo. But most of us have experienced PowerPoint presentations in the real world, so it’s a familiar basis for your first meeting.

In time, you’ll want to move your metaverse experiences towards whiteboarding sessions or other collaboration experiences. If your business is in the manufacturing or industrial industries then you have a huge set of potential metaverse applications, and big potential business cases to build on. For white-collar industries such as banking, don’t get seduced by the novelty of VR: focus on the real business benefits.

5. Keep it serious

Before long you’ll hopefully have a small group of six to eight colleagues who are high performers for metaverse collaboration experiences. But how do you maintain momentum?

The first important aspect is to ensure your VR meetings are productive. VR experiences can quickly descend into playtime: to avoid this, plan out the content ahead of time. Like all meetings, metaverse experiences should have a clear agenda with set timings, and they should stick to the subject.

Recognise too that the metaverse isn’t the right choice for every type of get-together. VR creates a powerful sense that you’re all occupying the same space, having the sort of shared experience that isn’t possible via a web call. Yet Zoom remains more versatile for larger groups, especially if there is material to present. Regularly check with your team whether they feel meetings have taken place in the appropriate space. Could they have achieved more in person or on another collaboration service? Don’t try to shoehorn a metaverse experience in where it’s not wanted.

Trevor Hunt from Cloud Consultancy Behind Every Cloud says: “As a global team leader I would aim to meet my direct reports at least annually face-to-face – but can you really ‘trust’ someone you’ve not ‘met’ with all your senses engaged?” The best teams switch between media with dexterity, adding layers to their interactions as and when they are needed. Finding the balance between the metaverse, videoconferencing, phone and real-life experiences will be a shared challenge as the technology moves forward.

6. Insist on etiquette

The norms of acceptable behaviour in real-world society have evolved over thousands of years. Most of us pick up the conventions as children, and later through social and work experiences, often without even realising it.

Those rules don’t fully fit in the metaverse. In fact, there are no universal rules: we’re very much in an emergent phase, with ideas of acceptable and productive behaviour still developing. However, it’s already clear that some rules are needed. The particular etiquette for your company culture will likely differ from mine, but it must be understood from the start that the virtual space isn’t a free-for-all where anything goes.

It's equally important to manage crosstalk between the real world and the metaverse. Meeting participants need a place that’s safe and free from distractions: when your brain is in a virtual space, background noise from the outside world can be very disorientating. Book a meeting room if you’re in the office, and don’t wear your Oculus in a setting where you’re likely to be interrupted.

If possible, it’s good practice to stream the headset view to a screen or TV, so those who aren’t inside the meeting can see that there’s a serious meeting going on. This is an important part of spreading the word that the metaverse is a real business tool, and not a toy or a science-fiction fantasy.

Set rules for non-VR participants too. Never touch someone with a headset on, and if you have to interrupt them then approach from the front, speak their name loudly and get confirmation that they have heard you before continuing. I made the mistake of not setting this ground rule early on in my own office-based VR experiences – once you’ve been startled by someone else, you’ll really appreciate why this is such a no-no.

Lastly, set a threshold of acceptability with any avatar designs. I prefer life-like, warts-and-all representations, but there’s a whole conversation to be had about body image concerns and the metaverse. That’s beyond the scope of this article, but try to anticipate any concerns your users may have, and head them off ahead of time.

7. Keep it ethical

Moving into the metaverse may throw up ethical questions, such as issues concerning access and online behaviour. These can be addressed via a three-step process. First, identify your stakeholder groups; second, collect feedback on your activities from them; and third, integrate that feedback into your product design, while communicating your stance on specific concerns your stakeholders have raised.

Helpfully, this is also how environmental sustainability, social justice and corporate governance (ESG) issues should be managed – so in many organisations the discipline is already well developed. You just need to talk to the professionals responsible for these functions and incorporate their approach into your metaverse initiative.

What might this look like in practice? Well, I suspect in the vast majority of cases, your stakeholders will be your business colleagues. However, an immediate division is likely to arise between those chosen as early adopters and those left out: these are two different groups that each need to be represented. You might also want to consider stakeholder groups representing diverse samples of your team. I find five or six groups a good number to try to manage, but there really isn’t an upper-limit.

Next you need to develop a feedback mechanism. This might simply mean running a focus group, and inviting colleagues to raise any concerns – but pay regard not only to what is said, but what is left unsaid. For example, we’ve heard reports of women privately finding VR experiences intimidating due to other users’ inappropriate behaviour. HR professionals are often experienced at reading between the lines – you might want to co-opt a colleague from this department to help out with your focus groups.

Finally, you need to integrate this feedback into your metaverse project, and report back to your stakeholders on what you are doing. You may want to get a group together to collectively decide what the appropriate response should be: in a more formal environment, this might be called your “digital ethics committee”.

Also see what solutions can be discovered from your wider community. One example I came across was a black user raising a concern that a VR training exercise was set around a virtual campfire in a night-time setting, and she felt her skin-coloured avatar made her invisible to other users. All stakeholder groups agreed that an easy change could be made to accommodate this concern: we updated our rules to communicate that metaverse experiences should be created in spaces of natural daylight or equivalent. In every step, what we chose was clearly communicated, and new feedback gathered.

Don’t overlook the importance of the communication aspect. Stakeholder groups may disagree, but I’ve found that a majority decision will always be accepted as long as it’s clearly explained, along with the conditions under which it will be reviewed.

Many organisations are adopting varying forms of hybrid working post-pandemic, with one of the main considerations being how to keep distributed workforces connected, and continue successful collaboration.

This study looks at the increase in the digital delivery of services across industries, and how this is benefiting businesses - not only from a productivity perspective, but also for employee wellbeing. It also discusses how those organisations that don’t embrace a hybrid working future could miss out on attracting the best talent.

Download now for tips and guidance on how to plan for a hybrid workplace, how to empower distributed staff, and how to keep them productive and secure.

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Microsoft has announced an overhaul of its Microsoft Teams Rooms licensing, with new pricing to cater to a wider range of business sizes.

In a post on its website, the tech giant stated that from September 1, Teams Rooms will be offered in two tiers, ‘Basic’ and ‘Pro’. Teams Rooms Pro will be priced at $40 per room per month, while Teams Rooms Basic will be offered for free to any customer who has purchased a certified Teams Rooms device.

Teams Rooms is Microsoft’s hardware and managed service solution for Teams, in collaboration with certified providers of video conferencing hardware. It is currently offered at a ‘Standard’ or ‘Premium’ tier, which cost $15 and $50 per month respectively.

Microsoft identifies small and medium businesses (SMB) as the target audience for the Basic tier, which it states includes “scheduling, joining meetings, content sharing, and collaborative whiteboarding, as well as basic security and management capabilities out-of-the-box”.

Basic tier licences each cover one device per room and are only available as part of the setup process for certified devices. Customers are permitted up to 25 Basic tier licences per tenancy. Microsoft argues that this justifies offering the service at no additional cost, as it represents “a great opportunity for upsell to Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro”.

Similarly, Microsoft states within the blog post that providing the Basic tier for free gives its certified Teams Rooms partners a larger and more informed customer base, with increased upsell opportunities.

“The new licensing model will help improve the journey for your SMB customers with a low-friction path to the Teams Rooms solution at no cost (Teams Rooms Basic), increase sales and your monetization opportunities (Teams Rooms Pro), and clarify common questions about the use of user licenses, management value, and enhanced hybrid features.”

Free trials of Teams Rooms Pro are also available, to give customers first-hand experience of its benefits. Commercial customers will be allowed up to a one-month trial period, while charities, educational facilities and government customers will be afforded 60 trials.

In another change, Microsoft will be updating the managed services for Teams Rooms devices. AI-powered platform management will be included with Teams Rooms Pro SKU, with Microsoft promising round-the-clock monitoring, configuration of update rings, diagnostics and in-depth analytics into incidents. In line with this change, Microsoft will be phasing out the use of service engineers for incident management from October 1.

Current Standard and Premium customers will be allowed to use their licences until expiration but will have to choose one of the new SKUs at point of renewal.