Microsoft has announced its plans to launch Mesh for Microsoft Teams – a collaborative platform for virtual experiences. Microsoft will begin to roll out this new feature in 2022, which it had disclosed earlier in the year. The feature combines the mixed-reality capabilities of Microsoft Mesh, which allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic experiences, with the productivity tools of Microsoft Teams, where people can join virtual meetings, send chats, collaborate on shared documents, and more.
This news is coming a few days after Facebook rebranded to Meta – which will translate the social media giant to focus on metaverse, where the physical and digital worlds come together to interact at work, have meetings, and all forms of entertainment.
The plans by both Meta and Microsoft share similarities and both companies would be competing greatly in the metaverse.
Hear from Microsoft
According to Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 Collaboration, Mesh builds on existing Teams features such as Together mode and Presenter mode that make remote and hybrid meetings more collaborative and immersive. These tools are all ways “to signal we’re in the same virtual space, we’re one team, we’re one group, and help take the formality down a peg and the engagement up a peg.”
Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman said “As a company whose focus is on productivity, on knowledge workers, it’s something that customers are really asking us for, and it’s coupled with the vision of mixed reality that we’ve been working on for 12 years. It’s all coming together.”
Insight
The global pandemic paved way for organisations to work and collaborate remotely, and while this was exciting for most users at first, the excitement appeared to dwindle as many became weary of the experience. It is the expectation that the Mesh feature will take away the boredom and weariness associated with most remote meetings, and virtual meetings would become more fun, relatable and engaging.