Thinking of ditching your video conferencing solution for Microsoft Teams? Be careful!
If you're on Microsoft 365, you may already get Teams included with your subscription.
Many companies are under pressure to cut extraneous costs. Why pay for a service when it's bundled with your other apps?
You may achieve a saving by eliminating Zoom or other providers for the incumbent service included with your subscriptions.
There are two parties for any video call. Teams may work great for you, but third parties trying to join may have a hard time.
Here are some reasons why using a built-in/free service isn't always a great choice.
Logging in isn't always easy. If your service requires a Microsoft login, that alone can be a huge technical support burden. People have difficulty managing Microsoft logins compared with Google or Apple.
The other entity may not have your app. So even if you're on Teams, they may need to download it and install it, and may not notice the application requirement until right as your meeting is starting, resulting in several minutes of delay.
The people you invite may end up having technical support requirements if your system isn't easy to use, even if you've standardized on it.
People will still invite you to their meetings, so even if you've limited your meetings to a single platform. You are still going to receive Zoom invites. This means you need to keep various applications on hand and ready to log-in.
If you save yourself money by eliminating an application you may end up adding tech support complexity, maintain more applications for compatibility and increase login difficulties. This may make your "savings" a costly expense.