Andrew Liptrot, Service Owner for AV and Workplace Technology at Haleon, shares how a global estate is moving from traditional video rooms to Microsoft Teams Rooms with clear standards, fewer components, and stronger operations.

• Four room archetypes to match business outcomes: Meet, Create, Engage, and Influence
• Consolidation on a lean set of components, with emphasis on reliability, supportability, and lifecycle
• Internal design capability, visual room design, and partner delivery against agreed standards
• Governance and service maturity across policies, SOPs, and continuous improvement
• Proactive monitoring and the push towards “self-healing” rooms at scale
• Broadening from room uptime to overall digital employee experience, including booking, signage, and workspace tools

In this episode, Tormod Ree, Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Neat, shares his view on where meeting room technology is heading and how Neat plans to differentiate while staying simple and reliable for customers.

• AI across the experience: device-side media understanding, and platform features will move meetings from basic framing to experiences that adapt to the interaction in the room.
• Hybrid work isn’t solved: organisations still struggle to give remote participants equal presence for video, audio and collaboration. 
• Rooms must support more than a “video window” and enable local, collaborative and mixed scenarios.
• Neat’s approach to scale: multi‑device architecture for larger and more complex spaces, companion devices like Neat Center, and an App Hub to use devices for more than meetings.
• Platform alignment without losing identity and partnership on Microsoft’s Devices Ecosystem Platform to improve quality, provisioning and integrations, while retaining Neat’s own innovations and simplicity focus.

Thanks to Neat, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Wesley Budd, Partner Solutions Architect at Microsoft, explains how partners are driving real-world impact with Microsoft 365 Copilot.

• The role of partners in readiness, security, adoption and change
• Why agentathons are gaining traction and what they mean for Copilot Studio
• How partners are using AI Builder and Copilot Studio to build tailored solutions
• How the Copilot Jumpstart programme is helping partners accelerate customer success
• Opportunities for partners to unlock business transformation with Copilot 

Thanks to AudioCodes, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support. 

Microsoft Teams Monthly Update - October 2025

• Copilot Chat (free) in Office Apps
• Unified Copilot Chat in Teams
• Agent Mode in Excel and Word
• Teams Channel Agents
• Anthropic Claude Models Come to Copilot
• Office Agent (Anthropic)
• Bring Consumer Copilot to Work?
• New Teams Features
• Teams Devices News
• Events

Thanks to Neat, this month's benefactor, for your support of Empowering.Cloud and the community.

Note that this is an audio-only version of the update, so if you would like to see the accompanying slides, please watch the video version on Empowering.Cloud

Andre Razzuri, Associate Director at IQVIA, explains how IQVIA rolled out Microsoft Teams Rooms to 650 rooms globally, creating standards and managing a global environment.

• Why IQVIA standardised on Lenovo Windows 11 MTRs for cost, supportability, remote management and user experience
• Deploying 200 rooms per year with a small core team through strict global standards and robust remote tooling
• Where they partnered with AVI-SPL for boardrooms and global rollouts, and how responsibilities are shared
• Getting leadership buy-in using usage data and trusted internal champions
  
  Thanks to AVI-SPL, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Simon Dudley, independent consultant and with extensive former experience at Polycom, Lifesize, and Logitech, examines how customers, OEMs and resellers can navigate the increasingly commoditised video conferencing market.

Simon and Tom discuss:

• Why most video bars are “good enough” and what that means for differentiation
• How ESG, financial transparency, and global distribution are becoming key buying factors
• The importance of understanding your A/B/C brand status as a vendor or reseller
• Why customers should look beyond specs and prioritise reliability, support, and management tools
• Lessons from the PC industry and how they could apply to the future of MTR devices

Thanks to Pure-IP, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support.

Find Simon’s website here: Excession Events 

Irena Andonova, Head of Product for Teams Devices at Microsoft, discusses the evolution of Teams Rooms, Phones and Devices

• AI is transforming physical meeting spaces—supporting speaker attribution, voice isolation, and real-time summarisation, even in unscheduled in-person meetings.
• Voice and face enrolment enables accurate transcript attribution across Windows and Android platforms.
• AI-powered features in Teams Phones
• How AI is being embedded into the Pro Management Portal to support large-scale operations, automate issue resolution, and deliver actionable insights.
• The importance of usage analytics for facilities planning—e.g. identifying underused or overbooked rooms by floor and day.
• Ongoing investment in cross-platform scalability, including Autopilot for Windows and Android, and integration with MDEP (Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform).

Microsoft Teams Monthly Update - September 2025

• Malicious URL Protection for Teams
• Improved Organization Chart in Profile Card
• Control External Access by Domain for Specific Users and Groups
• 5 Unify Certified Contact Centers
• New Teams Desk Phone Transfer UI
• Touch Console Support for MTRoW Boards
• Browser Support for MTRoW Boards
• Sales, Service, and Finance Copilots now included with Microsoft 365 Copilot License
• Improved Copilot Chat in Office Apps
• Events

Thanks to Ribbon, this month's benefactor, for your support of Empowering.Cloud and the community.

Note that this is an audio-only version of the update, so if you would like to see the accompanying slides, please watch the video version on Empowering.Cloud

Matt Hurst, Senior Director of Strategic Business Architecture at Ribbon, joins Tom Arbuthnot to discuss the significant changes occurring in telco infrastructure with AI, analytics, and automation. Matt clearly explains how Automation, Containerisation and AI work and apply in telco and also large enterprise infrastructure.

The telecommunications industry is embracing containerisation and automation to address competitive pressures, security requirements, and operational efficiency challenges. Traditional hardware deployment models are being replaced by flexible, cloud-native approaches that enable rapid scaling and automated management.

• Containerisation breaks network functions into modular components that scale dynamically based on demand
• Automation reduces manual patching, testing, and configuration whilst improving security compliance
• AI-powered chatbots guide junior engineers through complex troubleshooting using integrated documentation
• Infrastructure as code creates single source of truth for network configurations across multiple sites
• Adoption is being driven by security operations requirements and specialised skills shortages

Thanks to Ribbon, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support. 

Tom Arbuthnot discusses Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption with Karoliina Kettukari, Head of Modern Work at OP Financial Group in Finland.

OP Financial Group has licensed approximately half their workforce for M365 Copilot, with strong support from senior management and eager employee adoption. The organisation also utilises Copilot Chat for an additional 50% of their licensed user base, particularly for roles working primarily in customer systems rather than M365 applications.

• Meeting summaries and note-taking represent the primary use case, delivering immediate time savings
• Organisation uses a tiered approach with basic training for general users and advanced documentation for power users
• Teams-based sharing of use cases within departments proves more effective than organisation-wide libraries
• Agent development shows promise but faces technical barriers requiring Copilot Studio expertise
• Regulatory compliance creates additional approval processes for new AI features in financial services
• Support delivered through Teams channels and Viva Engage communities rather than traditional training methods

The transition from personal productivity use cases to team-based and process automation represents the next phase of their adoption journey.

Thanks to Neat, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support.