Collaboration Roadmap Update

• Microsoft has focused its collaboration offerings around Office 365 Groups.
• Teams has become the leading collaboration offering from Microsoft.
• Not all collaboration technologies will continue to receive investment, and some will be deprecated.

The Office 365 Groups service is a cross-application membership service in Office 365 that is based on Azure Active Directory (AAD), and which can also offer shared resources such as a document library, an Outlook mailbox, and a calendar to members of a particular group. Groups is the core of Microsoft’s investment in collaboration spaces, which are virtual workspaces that can offer persistent discussions, file sharing, and other real-time shared activities. Newer Office 365 offerings like Teams are built around Groups, and some existing services have incorporated the service, while other existing services (such as Exchange, SharePoint, and Yammer) provide collaboration spaces that have seen Microsoft investment drop off.