Microsoft Teams Insider

Chris Styczynski, Service Owner for Unified Communication and Collaboration at Clifford Chance, shares how the global law firm approached their RFP process for migrating from Cisco on-prem telephony to Microsoft Teams.

• How Clifford Chance structured their RFP into six lots for flexibility: telephony migration, switchboard, contact centre, Operator Connect, on-site support, and managed services.

• Why conducting an RFI first helped pre-qualify vendors and identify the right partners for a firm of their size.

• The importance of understanding user requirements before going to market, especially as telephony needs evolve with AI and collaboration tools.

• How to evaluate partners beyond technical skills—considering culture, flexibility, and communication style for an 18-month project.

• Key considerations for global telephony migrations, including regulatory challenges across 20+ countries.

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

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for March 2026.

Many thanks to Ribbon for their continued support.

PowerPoint Deck

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3​
Anthropic in M365 Copilot ​
Copilot Cowork​
Agent 365​
Microsoft 365 E7​
AI Workplace Roadmap​
Teams Devices Roadmap​
New Teams Certified Devices​
Events​

Useful Links:
Briefings
Real AI Use Cases in the Contact Centre with Luware Nimbus - Costs, Risks and Benefits - Marcel Gaufroid, Head of Sales – EU, at Luware
Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context - Brennan McReynolds, Product Strategy Lead for Microsoft Places
Pure IP's Platform Strategy that Simplifies Enterprise Communications - Adnon Dow, Chief Strategy Officer at Pure IP
AI Voice Agents - Sean Keegan, Developer Evangelist for Azure Communication Services at Microsoft
Tony at NWN Explains How They Deliver Multi-Platform UCaaS at Scale with NUWAVE iPILOT

Teams Insider Podcasts
CTO of LabourNet on Microsoft Teams Phone and Contact Centre with a Dispersed National Workforce with Mike Love, CTO at LabourNet, Janet Souter-Dantu, Co-founder at ScopServ Integrated Services, and Vanesia Raborethe, Head of Sales at ScopServ
SharePoint at 25, Past, Present, and AI Future with Microsoft's Jeff Teper
AI enabling real-time communications with Adam Jacobs, IC3 Principal Program Manager at Microsoft
Scaling Microsoft Teams Phone and Teams Rooms at BAE Systems with Andrew Wigmore

Other Useful Links
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2026/03/09/copilot-cowork-a-new-way-of-getting-work-done/
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/02/27/microsoft-and-openai-joint-statement-on-continuing-partnership/
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/mc1247880
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1247634
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/mc1248392
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/mc1245225
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/mc1243546

Mike Love, CTO at LabourNet, is joined by Janet Souter-Dantu, Co-founder at ScopServ Integrated Services (Pty) Ltd, and Vanesia Raborethe, Head of Sales at ScopServ Integrated Services (Pty) Ltd, to discuss LabourNet's move to a Microsoft Teams-based contact centre with Landis.

LabourNet, established in 1996, is a large labour law consulting firm with a national footprint in South Africa.

• Why LabourNet standardised on Microsoft Teams as a single communications platform to support time-critical, high-importance client interactions

• How Landis Contact Centre queues, presence-based routing, and reporting improved visibility and support availability-based call distribution across a geographically dispersed workforce

• Lessons learned on adoption, process change, and why senior leaders tested the customer experience daily to drive improvements

• What's next, including better use of contact centre data and a cautious, data-first approach to AI augmentation for agents

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

Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps and Platforms, discusses 25 years of SharePoint — from its humble origins as an intranet product to a cloud platform supporting over a billion users and exabytes of data.

• Origin story: How two separate Microsoft projects merged to create SharePoint, filling a massive need for intranets, document management, and collaboration in one customisable platform

• The cloud transition: From Bill Gates announcing SharePoint Online in 2008 through years of architectural challenges to an elastic cloud service handling billions of requests per second

• From MySite to OneDrive: The feature IT initially rejected that eventually became OneDrive, now serving over a billion accounts on the SharePoint platform

• AI and large language capabilities: How LLMs and reasoning models are enabling zero-shot metadata tagging, AI-assisted site design, and agent capabilities across SharePoint

• What's new: A refreshed design language, reimagined information architecture with five core pillars (Intranet, Build, Publish, Discover, and OneDrive), and AI woven throughout the experience

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

Adam Jacobs, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, works in IC3—the real-time communications platform team behind Microsoft Teams. With four years at Microsoft and a decade at Polycom before that, Adam shares insights from the backend of one of the world's largest communications platforms.

• How IC3 supports Microsoft Teams at massive scale, including cost considerations for new features and AI capabilities

• The current state of Cloud Video Interop and why it remains important for some enterprise customers

• Moving transcription to new platforms to support AI and M365 Copilot strategy

• Real-time processing challenges for AI features, including face and voice recognition technologies

• Adam's journey from IT director to Polycom to Microsoft, and the value of understanding both customer and partner perspectives

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