Tag: kaizala

To set expectations straight away if you are expecting an answer please don’t be disappointed – I don’t know what Microsoft are or plan to do with Kaizala. This article will be entirely speculative and based on no sourced information.

If you are deploying Office 365 or planning to in 2019 I do think you need to find an answer to what Microsoft plan to do with Kaizala.

Kaizala is a mobile messaging app built for iOS and Android with many features similar to WhatsApp, initially released for countries where low bandwidth mobiles dominate. You can have one-to-one and group chats, voice, video and bot integration. Hold on a minute isn’t that what Microsoft Teams does I hear you say. And you would be correct there is a significant overlap between the Teams Chat function and Kaizala. Through to this November the discussion between Teams and Kaizala was academic – Kaizala not being available for Office 365, this changed in November Kaizala now being available for Office 365 commercial tenants.

So why did Microsoft choose to release Kaizala to Office 365? Redmond don’t simply release new services onto Office 365 in a random fashion. As I mentioned before I have no knowledge as to why but here are a few possible ideas:

1. WhatsApp is huge in business and IT professionals are becoming more concerned about the use of a consumer app for business decisions. IT pros and management however just can’t say don’t use it – they need to provide an alternative. Kaizala being integrated with Office 365 gives the under siege IT pro/management a viable substitute.
   
2. Teams Chat adoption may not be as high as OCS/Lync/Skype. I’ve written many times that Teams is fundamental to any Office 365 deployment but its strength lies more in Meetings and Collaboration rather than Chat. Using Teams for non IT people requires effort and thought which does not induce viral usage of chat. On the flip side there are also issues of over-usage of Teams with reports of Channel and Notification fatigue which chat exacerbates.
   
3. Kaizala would be a viral hit. Office 365 is a rich platform but it can be complicated to deploy with services such as Zoom and Workplace able to challenge the dominant platform. Kaizala reminds me of OCS/Lync. OCS and Lync drew people in, they wanted and often demanded to be allowed access to the service. They’d become accustomed to using Yahoo and Messenger chat but wanted a corporate version which OCS/Lync provided. I’m willing to wager that with very little effort Kaizala would reach a significant percentage of people within weeks of its release. Especially if used in combination with a message on (non)acceptable usage of WhatsApp.

No doubt there are issues and questions before anyone deploys Kaizala and my speculation may be over blown – I’ll try and cover these in Part Two. Meanwhile if you think of any more reasons why Microsoft released Kaizala to Office 365 please feel free to comment.

What are Microsoft Doing with Kaizala? Part Two

In Part One I provided some thoughts on why Microsoft released Kaizala to Office 365. In Part Two I’m going to provide my practical advice on finding out what Microsoft really think of Kaizala.

If you are deploying Office 365 in 2019 and you want to know more about Kaizala and how it could affect your deployment/roadmap – even if it’s just to confirm a ‘nothing to see here’ moment.

• Find out who (if anyone) in Redmond owns Kaizala. Understanding the Microsoft Office product team and management often provides plenty of clues about the future/potential of the product. Those who witnessed the emergence of Teams and its shift away from Skype management in mid-late 2016 knew something was going to happen with Skype. Similarly when people speculate what will happen with Outlook vis-a-vis Teams I can almost guarantee that Outlook and Teams will share a similar but non competing roadmap given the team which created Outlook also created Teams. My understanding of Kaizala is that it originated from a team in India and continues to be developed in India. So where and how does/did Kaizala get into Rajesh Jha’s Office organisation? If they report into the Teams team that would tell you one thing, if they were entirely separate from the Office team that might tell you something else.
  
• Ask when Microsoft intend to release where Kaizala data lies at rest. This is not only important for compliance but will provide information where they invest in servers. If they are co-located with Teams servers/services that would be of interest. At the moment Kaizala servers/services are not listed in the Microsoft Data Centre/Service list.
  
• Ask your sales team if Kaizala is part of their deployment metric through to the end of June 2019. I strongly suspect not at this stage.
  
• Ask the Marketing arm of Microsoft what and how they intend to market Kaizala. Even if they don’t provide an answer that will help you build a clue. For example would they intend on presenting Kaizala at Enterprise Connect? Are they updating their inner/outer loop slides to reflect Kaizala.

At the moment I’d imagine it would be difficult to ascertain answers to the above. This would provide a steer on the maturity of thought on Kaizala within Microsoft. Having said all that it is still intriguing on the release of Kaizala to Office 365 tenants.