On Wednesday morning, Microsoft launched a new independent version of the team for small businesses, the first paid version of its communication and collaboration services, which is provided separately from other office applications and services.
After Microsoft announced the news, the shares of zoom video communications fell by more than 6% and ringcentral fell by 8%, indicating that Wall Street is accepting the potential threat of these competitive services.
Microsoft team essentials costs $4 per user per month. Unlimited group meetings can last 30 hours each time, with up to 300 participants per meeting. Each user’s cloud storage capacity is 10GB. In addition, there are customer support, file sharing, task allocation tools, polling and data encryption.
As Barron’s pointed out in its release report, the price is lower than the entry-level paid service of $14.99 per user / month provided by zoom and the “Essentials” service of $19.99 per user / month provided by ringcentral.
The Microsoft team was established in 2017 and grew significantly during the influenza pandemic. Microsoft said in July that the monthly active users of the team reached 250 million, higher than 145 million in April, mainly in the business and working environment.
