Introduction
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has pushed more companies and organisations to transition to remote working. Twitter recently told all of its 5,000 employees to work from home because of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
With travel restrictions and more companies telling their employees to work from home, companies like Google and Cisco WebEx are offering free video – conferencing deals.
Remark Group are proud to be partnered with multiple video – conferencing companies that are offering special deals, we’ve gone into a bit of information on each company and their offering to help you decide which platform to go for.
Cisco WebEx
Cisco’s long-time conferencing service WebEx has a default free plan that offers your conferencing for up to three users with HD video, screen sharing on desktop and mobile devices.
To help make the transition to remote working easier, Cisco has added additional features to its free WebEx accounts and are also offering free 90-day business licenses. Free accounts will now allow users to host meetings with up to 100 participants for an unlimited amount of time. In addition to enhancing its free WebEx offering, Cisco has also decided to provide free 90-day WebEx licenses to businesses through its partners and sales team.
Google Hangouts Meet
Google has already put its remote working conferencing to the test when it asked for all Ireland employees to work from home.
Google isn’t offering free conferencing services to new users, but it is rolling out free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all its G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. This includes larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain; and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.
These features are typically available in the Enterprise edition of G Suite and in G Suite Enterprise for Education, but they will be available at no additional cost to all customers until July 1, 2020.
Microsoft Teams
In response to the virus threat, Microsoft is offering a new six-month Office 365 E1 trial offer that includes full meetings, collaboration and workflow capabilities and will enable all global customers—e.g. hospitals, schools and businesses—to start using Teams immediately.
In addition, from 10th March, Microsoft is rolling out updates to the free version of Teams that will lift restrictions on user limits and make it possible for users to schedule meetings for video calling and conferencing. The free version of Microsoft Teams was already impressive in its own right. It supports up to 300 members, with guest access, one-on-one, and group video and audio calls, shared files (2GB per user and 10GB per team), screen sharing, and document collaboration using online Office apps.
If you’re interested in any of these services and want to upgrade your video conferencing systems, get in touch today. Our expert audio-visual team can work with you to provide your business with the best solution.
