UIW Advances Digital Strategy: Chooses Microsoft Teams for Enhanced Collaboration, Set to Discontinue Zoom in 2024
By Neil Schroeder
This fall, the UIW IT team reviewed our digital communications infrastructure, looking at our tools and processes for telephone, chat/collaboration, and video conferencing. This effort included detailed feature comparisons, comprehensive contract reviews, and other activities to ensure the university has the most capable platforms at optimal pricing levels.
I wanted to share the two key conclusions of this effort. First, we will maintain our existing RingCentral telephone platform, and with some diligent renegotiation, we will realize substantial annual savings. Additionally, we look forward to new capabilities, such as a deep integration for telephone calling capability into the Microsoft Teams client.
Second, regarding video conferencing, our Instructional Technology team comprehensively compared Zoom and Teams. We found that Teams has reached full feature parity and, coupled with upcoming innovations, exceeds Zoom’s capability. Our usage data also shows year-over declines in Zoom usage and increases in Teams usage. These data points, coupled with the substantial cost savings we will realize, led us to the decision to consolidate our video conferencing platform to Microsoft Teams. As a result, we will be ending support for Zoom on June 1, 2024.
We understand Zoom has been integral to our lives and instruction, especially since the pandemic. To aid in the transition, we will have training events throughout the spring to cover fundamental Teams operation and offer specific instruction on moving from Zoom to Teams for the Zoom pros. The final schedule for these events will be released in mid-January. It will be posted on the UIW Teams site along with many other valuable resources for getting familiar with Teams. Finally our Teams experts will also be proactively working with many offices to ensure a smooth transition of all key functions and classes that were previously scheduled to use Zoom in the summer and beyond.
Thank you for your support as we prepare for this exciting transition.