![\"Microsoft](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/uploads\/prod\/2021\/10\/ms-digital-stories-300x122.png\")
For Microsoft, the best part of\u00a0the\u00a0epic\u00a0snowstorms\u00a0that hammered its headquarters for nine straight days\u00a0is that\u00a0the\u00a0collaboration\u00a0technology\u00a0that employees\u00a0used\u00a0to\u00a0work from home\u00a0was as seamless\u00a0as\u00a0if\u00a0they were still in the office.<\/p>\n
While the 50,000 employees who live in Redmond, Washington\u00a0were\u00a0blocked in by\u00a0roughly\u00a0two\u00a0feet of snow that fell from February\u00a04th-12th,\u00a0the Microsoft Teams platform they used to work\u00a0from home\u00a0didn\u2019t flinch\u00a0despite taking on a much heavier workload than usual.\u00a0The storms\u00a0that battered the Northwest\u00a0were\u00a0the first large-scale test\u00a0for remote workers\u00a0at Microsoft\u00a0since\u00a0the company began moving\u00a0all\u00a0its communications\u00a0from Skype for Business\u00a0to\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0Teams in the fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big win here is Teams stayed consistent\u2014we didn\u2019t see a big difference from before the storms even though 90 percent of our employees were working from home,\u201d says Dan Babb, a senior service engineering manager in Microsoft Digital. \u201cOur metrics stayed pretty much the same across all the different kinds of internet connections that our employees use at home\u2014that\u2019s pretty amazing compared to where we used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The technology\u00a0mostly\u00a0disappeared into the background\u00a0\u2013 it just worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe environment scaled up,\u201d Babb says. \u201cAll of the employees who\u00a0were\u00a0working\u00a0from home used\u00a0their own home network connections, which are never going to be as good as the connection we have in our corporate buildings. The metrics we focus on did have a slight dip\u2014which was to be expected\u2014but still remained green.\u201d<\/p>\n
To geek out for a minute, Teams performed even better than you would think, says Jonathan Clare, also a senior service engineer in Microsoft Digital.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMost people\u00a0working at home are on\u00a0WiFi,\u201d he says,\u00a0explaining that\u00a0the bulk of the 50,000 employees who live in the\u00a0Puget Sound region were working from home,\u00a0seriously\u00a0taxing\u00a0the private internet services\u00a0they were using to connect.\u00a0\u201cDespite that, Teams performed very similar to how it would\u00a0if everyone was working in\u00a0their offices\u2014that we\u00a0had that kind of parity is\u00a0remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n Babb attributes the positive experience to the massively scalable Teams\u2019 micro-service architecture that runs natively in the cloud.<\/p>\n Teams isn\u2019t without challenges, but\u00a0those are mainly around refining the\u00a0user\u00a0experience.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I talk, I can be clearly understood,\u201d Babb says. \u201cThe chance\u00a0of\u00a0having\u00a0any type of audio distortion has greatly reduced\u2014for example, I don\u2019t sound like\u00a0I have\u00a0robot voice, and\u00a0my voice\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0sound like it\u2019s being cutoff.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Teams optimizes\u00a0the audio and video experience\u00a0in\u00a0limited bandwidth conditions,\u00a0greatly improving the call quality experience.<\/p>\n The biggest test for Teams during the snowstorms was meetings, because\u00a0the impact of having everyone call in\u00a0at the same time during a weather event\u00a0is exponential.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen everyone is in the office, you can have 10 people attend a meeting\u00a0in a conference room\u2014you\u00a0can\u00a0aggregate\u00a0everyone in the room\u00a0down to\u00a0one person joining a meeting,\u201d\u00a0Babb\u00a0says.\u00a0\u201cWhen everyone calls in from home, the level of complexity and the scale of the load is exponentially higher\u00a0because all 10 of those people have to join on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n During the storm, Teams worked fine, despite everyone at the company joining\u00a0all their\u00a0meetings from home, all at the same time. \u201cThe service didn\u2019t bat an eye,\u201d\u00a0Babb\u00a0says.<\/p>\n Some employees anecdotally reported having a few calls drop during the weather event, but\u00a0there\u2019s no way around that\u00a0when everyone in the region is dealing with the same storm system\u00a0that caused\u00a0intermittent power outages\u00a0and congested public internet\u00a0services,\u00a0Clare says.<\/p>\n Clare and Babb say they\u2019re happy with how well Teams held up in its first big test at Microsoft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Microsoft, the best part of\u00a0the\u00a0epic\u00a0snowstorms\u00a0that hammered its headquarters for nine straight days\u00a0is that\u00a0the\u00a0collaboration\u00a0technology\u00a0that employees\u00a0used\u00a0to\u00a0work from home\u00a0was as seamless\u00a0as\u00a0if\u00a0they were still in the office. While the 50,000 employees who live in Redmond, Washington\u00a0were\u00a0blocked in by\u00a0roughly\u00a0two\u00a0feet of snow that fell from February\u00a04th-12th,\u00a0the Microsoft Teams platform they used to work\u00a0from home\u00a0didn\u2019t flinch\u00a0despite taking on a much heavier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_hide_featured_on_single":false,"_show_featured_caption_on_single":true,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,74,114],"coauthors":[138],"class_list":["post-4379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-azure","tag-cloud-computing","tag-microsoft-teams","m-blog-post"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/02\/inline_image_cropped.jpg\")