In light of Zoom taking the spotlight for the wrong reasons and fixing issues on-the-go, it seems that barely anyone has paid any attention to Microsoft Teams at all. We have mentioned them a couple of times before but today, we just found out that the company is actually offering a 6-month free trial to their premium version (for more than a month now).
We aren't sure why this offer wasn't advertised or marketed to social media widely, but here we are bringing you the news. If you have no idea what Microsoft Teams is, it's a video chat/call application which comes as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. Since 4 March 2020, Jared Spataro, the Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, tweeted that anyone can use Microsoft Teams premium package free-of-charge for 6 months in view of the COVID-19 outbreak.
At Microsoft, the health and safety of employees, customers, partners and communities is our top priority. By making Teams available to all for free for six months, we hope that we can support public health and safety by making remote work even easier. https://t.co/e8aaocLzYD
— JP Courtois (@JP_Courtois) March 3, 2020
While the basic package is already free in the first place, it lacks some features that the premium version has. For example, better access for scheduling and meetings, a 50GB mailbox per user, 1TB cloud storage, sending attachments up to 150MB, an "Enterprise-grade security" and more. The premium version also includes Words, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Also, if you are already licensed for Office 365, you already have it!
After the 6-months free trial, the fee will be just $5 (~RM21) user/month. If you are interested in using Microsoft Teams as an alternative to Zoom, you can check it out at their webpage right here. Stay tuned for more tech news at TechNave.com.
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