Facebook, now known as Meta, isn't the only tech company focusing on the metaverse. Microsoft is also getting into this new online world, taking a more business-like approach. At the Microsoft Ignite IT pro conference this week, the company gave more details about its work on the metaverse, announcing that collaboration platform Teams.
At another conference in May, Microsoft unveiled its mixed-reality collaboration platform Mesh powered by Azure. At the time, company executives said that Microsoft would bring Mesh to Teams. Now, the company has officially announced that Mesh for Teams will begin rolling out in preview in 2022 with a set of immersive spaces for things like meetings and social mixers. Over time, Microsoft will add tools that will allow customers to create their own custom spaces.
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Microsoft describes Mesh for Teams as a Teams feature that “will combine the mixed-reality capabilities of Microsoft Mesh, which allows people in different physical locations to participate in collaborative and shared holographic experiences, with the productivity tools of Teams, which allow users to participate in virtual meetings, send messages, and more.”
Mesh for Teams is designed to make online meetings more personal, engaging, and fun.
Microsoft representatives believe that people will feel more engaged and involved in a project if they can share a virtual space where they exist as avatars (and one day, as holograms). People will be able to access Mesh for Teams not only with mixed-reality headsets like HoloLens, but also through standard smartphones and laptops.
The company's goal is to make users feel like they are with their colleagues in a virtual environment.
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This isn’t the first time Microsoft has tried to integrate its mixed-reality products with Office. In 2018, the company previewed “SharePoint Spaces,” a feature that would allow SharePoint users to create and use mixed-reality 3D spaces where they could visualize and interact with data and product models. A spokesperson said the company is working to bring Mesh for Microsoft Teams functionality to SharePoint Spaces.
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Microsoft’s “enterprise” approach to the metaverse means that employees will be “represented” by their digital twins. In this virtual world, people can “come together to communicate and collaborate with a personal virtual presence on any device,” in Microsoft’s words. Companies will be able to build their own immersive spaces/metavasses in Teams. The metaverse, as Microsoft proposes, will give people an additional way to collaborate, beyond the usual ones (messages, emails, video calls, and face-to-face meetings).
For more details, see here.
Source: ZDnet
