Microsoft is accelerating Teams, final version scheduled for release this June

During the pandemic, the kind we work in many areas has been drastically changed. While people went into the security of home offices or quarantine (or both!), communication had to be maintained in one way or the other. A lot of tools popped out of the nowhere but Microsoft Teams was the one to found any Microsoft 365-based communication- and collaboration policy. Despite the approach of combining many parts of M365 with this tool, Teams (at least on Windows, the Mac gained native Apple Silicon-support some months ago already) was the usurpator of CPU and RAM-resources.

This is about to change this June as Microsoft recently announced a faster and redesigned version of Microsoft Teams and began to rollout a preview version on selected Windows-users yesterday. Being compared to the classic (and Electron-based) app so far, Microsoft stated that the client will be twice as fast, consuming 50% less memory and up to 70% less disk space as the client we know and use so far. Additionally, the initial launch of the app is told to be three times faster while changing between chats and channels is faster by factor 1,7.

„We have been listening to your feedback which has culminated in a reimagining of Teams from the ground up. The new app is built on a foundation of speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence—delivering up to two times faster performance while using 50 percent less memory so you can save time and collaborate more efficiently. We have also streamlined the user experience so that it is simpler to use and easier to find everything in one place.“

(Jeff Teper, President, Collaborative Apps and Platforms, Microsoft)

Reading this, Mr. Teper proves that Microsoft just doesn’t put on some new paint on an old building but is overhauling the whole construction to meet modern-day requirements in a permanent changing and versatile hybrid work scenario. Streamlining the user experience, everything should now be found better at one place, continuing to develop Teams into THE specific information- and collaboration hub. Thus spoken, these new implementations are told to deliver the foundation for additional AI-powered experiences like Copilot for Microsoft Teams which was announced earlier his month.

“New Teams initially support Windows Intel, AMD, and ARM platforms and will be coming for all major platforms including Web, native M1, M2 & Intel Macs, and VDI,” added Sumi Singh, Corporate Vice President for Teams Engineering, in a separate blog post. The days of the encapsulated Electron-based wrapper should now see an end while Microsoft finally seems to make the final step to a real and polished Microsoft Teams user-experience, getting rid of the burden that was necessary to venture a rather new solution through the unknown waters of the COVID-19 pandemic. These days, the platform serves for 280 millions of users each month.

Users being in the public preview-program can immediately gain access to the new Teams via the “Try the new Teams” toggle. Others who are in the Targeted Release-program, will get access to the Teams-preview release starting mid-April 2023. Admins will have the option to opt-in to the Teams preview program for users in production via the Teams update management-policy which will allow selecting the users who will see the preview toggle to gain access to the new Teams.