Microsoft’s roadmap promises changes in the coming year

Microsoft continues to iterate and develop their products as we enter the year 2023, including planned advances across the whole of the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Outlook and MS Teams. Microsoft’s roadmap promises changes to existing products and services, and shows a variety of features in development that we can look forward to seeing as 2023 gets started.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced they were considering adding OpenAI to their office suite, including Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint as well as to the Bing search engine. With this, Microsoft hopes to jump onto the rising trend offered by AI-derived services and get a leg up over potential competitors – including Google, who have reportedly declared a “Code Red” over the new technology and its potential to disrupt the existing market and business.

The improvements Microsoft has shown on their roadmap are not limited to Bing and Office. Coming as soon as March of this year, Microsoft has announced their intention to include a MS Teams Chat in Outlook, allowing meeting organizers and attendees to communicate and organize without exchanging emails. This follows a number of improvements over the course of last year, indicating a continued commitment by the tech giant to their business chat software despite looming concerns over potential EU antitrust action in favor of Slack.

Rapid changes present challenges to businesses in the coming year

While the development of new tools and services is a sign of progress, there is cause for caution and concern as well – especially in the business sector, where stability is paramount and shocks in the business environment can cause major issues.

Microsoft’s suite of products is well-known and ubiquitous in the business sphere; Office, Outlook and Teams have become a go-to solution for companies worldwide across a variety of markets and fields. At the same time, these companies largely have to turn to third-party services to handle aspects such as backup and archiving, eDiscovery, or retention.

These services are long-term commitments and companies will occasionally even forget which software they use. When the business environment changes, however, these long-term decisions take on immediacy and relevance. Unless the third party in question keeps their solution in step with changes, there is a possibility for the older solution to lose complete compatibility and coverage with the source system. This exposes your company and your critical business data to possible risk.

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Can’t wait to try the new MS Teams chat? Try teamsTALK for Outlook.

by Matúš Koronthály