Collaboration apps, such as Microsoft Teams, have become critical during the pandemic because they enable employees to stay connected and engaged while they work. Just how critical? Microsoft reported 270 million Teams users in January 2022, up from 75 million in April 2020, a few weeks into the pandemic, according to ZDNet. Teams and similar apps have proven essential to the remote workplace. ServiceNow is one of the companies benefiting from Teams adoption.

Martello recently commissioned EMA to conduct an entirely independent exploration of the state of Microsoft 365 and how enterprises are managing its performance and user experience in today’s modern workplace. With special attention given to Microsoft Teams, EMA set out to gauge the criticality, impact, performance, management, challenges, and best practices of Microsoft 365.

The work landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years and it has been a challenge for an organizations IT teams to keep the workforce connected. For many businesses, Microsoft Teams has become a core part of their efforts to keep connected but supporting the Microsoft Teams infrastructure has been something many IT departments have had to learn on the fly. Pre-pandemic, businesses might have had thousands of employees working in a handful of offices.

There is no doubt about it that the events of 2020 triggered a huge surge in the use of unified communication products. In the consumer space, everyone and their grandmother became familiar with Zoom; in the enterprise space though, many took advantage of their Microsoft licensing to leverage Teams meetings and calls as a primary communication mechanism. This, in turn, has focused a lot more attention for system administrators on how to monitor Microsoft 365 (O365) and Teams in particular.