Microsoft Teams Insider

Henry Levak, VP & General Manager (Team Workspace Solutions Business Group) at Logitech, discusses the company's biggest-ever enterprise launch, covering breakthrough hardware and revolutionary audio technology.

• Rally Bar 2: a single device replacing both Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini, with a die-cast recycled aluminium body, all-digital camera system and MDEP built in from launch

• Tap IP 2 and Tap Scheduler 2: Tap IP 2 gains improved presence detection whether table or wall-mounted, while Tap Scheduler 2 adds presence awareness that turns the display off when no one is nearby, saving around 30% power

• Rally System 2 Pro: a modular ecosystem featuring cameras, speakers, mic pods and RoomMate 2 Pro compute, connected via Logitech Link AV over IP

• Divisible rooms and Scenes: connect up to three Rally System 2 Pro units with pre-configured scenes for flexible, partner-customisable room configurations

• Sound Shape technology: the Rally Speaker 2 Pro (32-driver array) and Rally Speaker 2 Max (64-driver array) beam audio precisely into defined zones, enabling level coverage and dual-language support in a single room

• Rally Speaker 2: a seven-driver line array sound bar for rooms up to eight metres, delivering state-of-the-art front-of-room audio

• Availability: Rally Bar 2, Tap IP 2 and Tap Scheduler 2 are available now; the Pro AV line launches summer 2027

Thanks to Logitech, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Tom Crinnegan, M365 AI Services & Governance Leader at EY, discusses how EY is deploying and governing Microsoft 365 Copilot across 420,000 users in over 140 countries.

• Managing Microsoft's Frontier early access programme at enterprise scale and setting user expectations

• The shift to usage-based billing and why IT shouldn't hold the AI credit budget

• Governance challenges with Cowork, autopilots, and Copilot code

• Running weekly enablement sessions reaching 7-8k attendees across a 420,000-strong workforce

• Keeping humans in the loop when tooling offers to take on 20-30% of the working day

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

Jamie Bartlett, award-winning technology writer and bestselling author of How to Talk to AI, discusses why the skills that matter most for using language models are cognitive and linguistic, not technical.

• How language models actually work and why understanding the basics changes how you use them

• The sycophancy problem: how question framing and emotional pressure skew your results

• Why cognitive offloading is a growing risk for individuals and organisations

• Voice mode vs typing and when each approach serves you best

• Practical techniques including devil's advocate prompting, cognitive friction, and reflecting before prompting

• Why the best AI users are often people with no IT background at all

More about Jamie and his work at jamiebartlett.co.

Thanks to Jabra, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Tristan Gayford, Microsoft Teams Product Manager at EY, discusses managing Microsoft Teams across one of the world's largest organisations and the challenge of shifting from predictable per-user licensing to consumption-based AI costs.

• Tristan's journey through the unified communications evolution, from Office Communications Server in 2008 through Lync and Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams at enterprise scale

• Running Microsoft Teams across 400,000+ employees in over 100 countries, and how professional services firms navigate data residency and regulatory complexity

• How EY has adopted Microsoft Copilot for meeting recaps, transcription and notes, balancing retained and transient transcription across different regulatory environments

• The fundamental shift from fixed per-user-per-month licensing to consumption-based AI billing, and why IT funding models need to evolve

• Why AI consumption costs should be owned by the business rather than IT, treating AI as an employee whose output must be justified up the management chain

• The challenge of model selection and cost transparency when business users lack guidance on which AI model to choose and cannot predict costs before running a prompt

Thanks to Landis, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Pratik Chanda, WW Partner Sales Lead - Devices, GCPS GTM at Cisco, discusses Cisco's record-breaking growth in the devices market and why the company is uniquely positioned for Microsoft Teams Rooms deployments.

• Cisco's journey to becoming one of the fastest-growing Microsoft Teams Rooms OEMs, crossing almost a billion dollars in devices revenue

• What sets Cisco apart: the intelligent workplace experience, combining AV, networking, security and AI observability across the entire stack

• The management story: ProPortal, Control Hub (soon to be Cloud Control) and dual registration for a single pane of glass across all endpoints

• Cisco's open platform philosophy: native support for Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google, and the rebrand from Webex Devices to Cisco Devices

• How customers and partners can get started with Cisco for Microsoft Teams Rooms

Thanks to Cisco, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.