Zoom vs Teams: Video Conferencing
The month of March has seen COVID-19 force people to stay at home and self-isolate. With this new way of life in effect, more people than ever are working from home to stay safe during the pandemic. As a result, the use of video conferencing software has increased dramatically, facilitating communication between organisations and individuals.
A lot of businesses have found themselves in the same situation, having not actively utilised video conferencing before this point and now needing to find the best tool to fit the job. Some businesses have used the most popular or the cheapest option to quickly bridge the gap. However, with proper research behind their decision, they could easily find the best video conferencing software for their business.
Two tools are most frequently mentioned when discussing meetings and working from home, Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s all-encompassing workstream collaboration plus unified communications platform – combining meetings, chats, calls, and file sharing with the Office 365 application stack to bring everyone together in a shared workspace.
While Zoom is not as notorious as Microsoft, it is a leader within the video communications industry. Zoom looks to create a unified cloud communication platform for video, audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars.
What’s the difference?
At a glance, Microsoft Teams and Zoom appear to overlap with their video conferencing services. Looking deeper you will find more unique features that can significantly sway a user’s decision as to which platform is the best fit. Microsoft Teams and Zoom both provide web conferencing features, but also have unique features that set them apart.
Microsoft Teams includes a robust chat service that allows users to communicate quickly without setting up a conference. Syncing with Office 365 also makes collaboration easy by allowing file sharing and calendar support. Microsoft’s feature set is focused around perfecting internal communication.
Zoom’s main focus is on video and audio conferencing. Zoom makes for easy conferencing even with users that are not part of the company account and provides features such as multiple screen sharing to support web-based presentations.
Zoom Features
Where similar tools focus on features like instant messaging and content sharing, Zoom focuses on easy-to-access video and audio conferencing. Zoom also provides users with the ability to share content, send instant messages, and multiple screen sharing to support web-based presentations.
Zoom is praised by its simplicity, meaning users can join a meeting anywhere, from any device, and access video for both internal and external communications.
Zoom’s features include:
- HD Video and Audio
- Support to up to 1,000 video participants
- Up to 49 videos on a screen
- End-to-end encryption for all meetings
- Custom backgrounds for video conferencing
- Screen sharing and co-annotation
- Recording and transcription
- Team chat with groups
- Searchable history
- File sharing
Microsoft Teams Features
Microsoft Teams is well known as a business collaboration tool, potentially the most popular tool on the market. Microsoft Teams defining feature is its ability to work seamlessly with other Microsoft and Office 365 products, something that a lot of businesses already utilise. Users can launch meetings from Outlook or Exchange Calendar, and real-time collaboration means working together on documents is straightforward.
Teams is also accessible across any device, offering a uniform experience wherever you are.
Microsoft Team’s features include:
- Full integration with Office 365
- Video conferencing with background blur
- Excellent audio with transcription
- File and screen sharing
- Instant messaging one-to-one and in groups
- Fully searchable conversational channels
- Seamless access from multiple devices
- End-to-end security
- Tabs to make finding information easy
- Recording
Microsoft Teams vs Zoom: Integrations
While having good video services is a must, being able to integrate other applications into the service is crucial for a lot of users. Both Zoom and Teams have a lot of integrations that users can utilize. As previously mentioned, Teams is integrated into other Microsoft applications. This means that users referencing apps like Outlook, Word and Excel can easily incorporate them within the communication. Users can also find several add-ons available through the Microsoft app store for Teams.
Zoom also offers a host of add-ons as they champion the idea of users meeting how they want to meet. Users can integrate Zoom with a wide range of third-party integrations including Skype For Business, OneDrive, Google Drive, Slack, Salesforce, MS Teams, Outlook, Marketo, HubSpot and more. To combine the tools with Zoom, users need to apply Zoom technology as a bolt-on to other apps, not as straightforward as some may like but does mean users can improve content sharing, scheduling and room collaboration.
Security
Microsoft Teams is built on the Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, delivering advanced security and compliance capabilities. Teams enforces team-wide and organization-wide two-factor authentication, single sign-on through Active Directory, and encryption of data in transit and at rest. Teams works with SharePoint, OneNote, Exchange, and more, to ensure the security is optimised. For example, files are stored in SharePoint and are backed by SharePoint encryption and notes are stored in OneNote and are backed by OneNote encryption.
While Zoom has a competent level of security with the increasing user numbers it has become a target for hacking and demonstrated some security risks. For example, there has been a surge in fraudulent Zoom domains being used to lure in unsuspecting users and steal their personal information. While this vulnerability has been patched, Zoom’s security is still being questioned with a U.S. attorney general looking into its practices.
Users of Zoom do have the ability to manually implement certain features to improve their security. This can include the use of passwords, authentication, waiting rooms and unique ID’s for meetings, giving admins more control over who accesses the meeting.
Which tool is best?
From the analysis, it appears that the key decider in this is dependent upon the external applications your business uses. Businesses that are not tied to Microsoft may find Zoom easy to use and can integrate it within other services. However, users that utilise Microsoft services will find Teams much more suited to their day-to-day operations with the advantage of full integration with Microsoft applications streamlining their work.
That being said, with the recent concerns about Zoom’s security gaps it puts into question if Zoom is the right tool to use at this moment. Security measures are a primary concern during these uncertain times and organisations need to trust in the platforms they use to conduct their business from home. Microsoft Team’s security measures overshadow Zoom’s insecurity and that may be the important factor for businesses choosing their video conferencing tool.
At Walvis Technologies we have helped many businesses make the important move to Microsoft Teams. With our expertise, we make the switch as straightforward as possible and are there to support your company through any teething problems once it's installed. If you think Microsoft Teams might be the right video conferencing tool for you then get in contact with us.
Don't just take our word for it, take a look at our process on our Microsoft 365 page and follow our social media for the latest Microsoft updates and features.
To keep up to date with our latest news follow us on social media – Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook