Articles about Messaging and Collaboration

To stay competitive in an increasingly digital world, companies are looking to transform their digital environment to improve collaboration and maintain their edge.

But a new study by Intralinks and the Cloud Security Alliance reveals that digital transformation strategies are being hindered by three main barriers.

Continue reading →

The way people do business will drastically change in the next three to five years, and Europeans are leading the way. This is according to a new report by Samsung, which investigates key trends impacting the workplace culture.

This new business model we’re all about to embrace Samsung dubs the Open Economy. Basically, it revolves around high levels of collaboration between companies, contractors and partners, while retaining industry-standard security levels. The report calls upon WIPO’s Global Innovation Index, which claims European countries occupy eight out of the top ten slots.

Continue reading →

Messaging apps are not just about chatting these days. Every player that counts wants to bring something extra to the table to keep users hooked and attract new ones in the process. WhatsApp is no different, as it is now rolling out an updated status feature that lets users share more than just basic messages.

"We are excited to announce that, coinciding with WhatsApp's eight birthday on February 24, we are reinventing the status feature", says WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum. The update gives users the option to also share photos and videos.

Continue reading →

Last month, Atlassian announced its $425 million acquisition of task management provider Trello, a move that signals increased consolidation in the unified communications and collaboration industry. As enterprise software providers continue buying asynchronous collaboration tools, we’ll see software giants like Atlassian expanding their portfolios to meet the needs of the evolving workforce.

Consolidation is actually a trend that’s here to stay in the collaboration space. Let's discuss the basics of this acquisition, what it means for the industry, the future of team-based communication and more:

Continue reading →

A potential successor to SMS has received strong backing from Google as it partners with Telenor to launch RCS messaging in Europe and Asia. Rich Communications Services is more feature-rich than traditional SMS and Google's latest partnership sees the technology spreading outside of the US and Canada.

With support for features such as group chat, read receipts and high resolution image sharing, RCS has a lot going for it. There's just one catch. In integrating RCS support into Android, Google is providing the "upgraded SMS experience" through its own Messenger app.

Continue reading →

In the US a duopoly exists between SAP and Syniverse for inter-carrier mobile messaging. Carriers and other communication service providers are forced to choose between these two vendors to exchange messages across networks.

This makes the carriers vulnerable to price hikes and sub-par quality of service. New provider tyntec is seeking to disrupt the market and create more competition with its new Inter Carrier Messaging Service (ICMS).

Continue reading →

IT security has never been more prominent at the forefront of people's minds than it is currently. With a sadly regular supply of hacking horror tales, Internet users are now exercising a great deal of care with the information they share through their networks. Stronger passwords and a reluctance to add personal details are among the more common measures to have become widely implemented.

Another option which people are leaning towards is that of secure messaging apps, a selection of which are profiled in the infographic below by ERS IT Solutions. There doesn’t yet exist a messaging app that is completely impenetrable to hackers, but there are those which distinguish themselves for their encryption of messages so that even if they are intercepted, the messages can’t be deciphered by unsolicited parties.

Continue reading →

It has been a little while coming, but WhatsApp is finally rolling out support for two-step verification to its messaging app.

The extra layer of security means that it is now more difficult to gain unauthorized access to an account, and it is a feature that is being made available to iOS, Android and Windows users. With the feature enabled, if you -- or anyone else, for that matter -- tries to verify your phone number on WhatsApp, you -- or they -- will have to provide the 6-digit passcode you create.

Continue reading →

Dropbox has announced "significant product updates", introducing Smart Sync (some of you might know it as Dropbox Infinite), and Paper.

The company says the introduction of Smart Sync and Paper will boost team productivity and improve collaborative processes, end-to-end. First up is the Smart Sync. Dropbox calls it an "industry first", cross-platform, on-demand cloud storage solution. It offers intuitive storage, allowing users to sync all the content from their computers to their Dropbox accounts.

Continue reading →

The Slack team collaboration tool has proved popular with many businesses since it first launched in 2013.

Now Slack is aiming to carry its success into larger organizations with the launch of Slack Enterprise Grid, offering the adaptability to create communication structures which mirror how teams already collaborate.

Continue reading →

Microsoft Teams, Slack's latest high-profile rival, is slowly gaining traction. The software giant has announced that 30,000 organizations, spread across 145 markets, "actively used" the collaboration service in the past month. It launched in late-November.

Where are those 30,000 customers coming from? Well, since Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365 that means that the users the collaboration service has are first and foremost Office 365 subscribers -- and there are 85 million active users there. That gives it huge potential for growth.

Continue reading →

On January 1, 2017, workers in France were given the "right to disconnect". Article 55 of the El Khomri Act is a key measure of the country’s revised Labor code that obliges companies with over 50 workers to begin negotiations with employees and guarantee them the right to ignore their smartphones outside of working hours.

It’s no secret that the rise of the smartphone has created an always-on culture, but while that has led to leaps in productivity it has also seen workers around the world burn out more quickly, compromise their work-life balance and become more stressed. Cabinet Eleas found that 12 percent of France’s working population suffers from a "burn out syndrome," with 37 percent admitting they use their devices outside of working hours each day.

Continue reading →

The tech world's backlash against Donald Trump's travel ban continues. The latest name to throw its hat into the ring is Viber with its Viber Out service.

The messaging service has announced that it is offering free calls between the US and countries affected by the new president's executive order restricting travel. Viber users can place free calls between the US and the seven affected countries -- landlines and mobiles included.

Continue reading →

Facebook has started to roll out the Messenger.com interface as a replacement for the longstanding message inbox on the web. The latest design should feel much more familiar to folks who use the chat service on their smartphones, as it closely resembles the Android and iOS apps.

There is no official announcement yet, but you should start seeing the new interface soon on your account. It debuted nearly two years ago as a standalone website and alternative to the message inbox for folks who do not want to visit Facebook (or wish to create an account with the social network, for that matter).

Continue reading →

Google is adding a new social component to YouTube, rolling out in-app messaging and direct video sharing on Android and iOS. The new features are available only in Canada at the time of writing this article, but Google says that they will be (eventually) released worldwide.

Why is Google introducing those features? Simple. In today's landscape, it is no longer enough to let users watch videos and reply back and forth in the comments section. If you look at Facebook, it is also super easy for users to connect after having a conversation, which then lets them privately share content, among other things. The result? They spend more time using the service.

Continue reading →