You can now join a Zoom call from Microsoft Teams and vice versa

'Interoperability' is a buzzword for the future of the internet, and it is starting to seep into tech offerings

Zoom and Microsoft Teams will work together. Bloomberg

Zoom and Microsoft Teams are teaming up to allow customers to join each other's meetings across both platforms.

They have launched a new tool, called Direct Guest Join, which allows Zoom Rooms to call into Microsoft Teams meetings, and vice versa, without having to buy or subscribe to anything new.

The service effectively makes the two platforms interoperable, a buzzword of Web3, considered by many to be the future of the internet, while underscoring the small, concrete steps companies are taking to reach this next frontier.

The global video conferencing market has boomed over the last two years, and is projected to more than double in value to $14.6 billion by 2029, from $6.8bn in 2022, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Zoom has a global market share of about 40 per cent for this type of service, with Teams accounting for 15 per cent, meaning the partnership has the potential to bring together more than half of all video conferencing users worldwide.

“In order for a communication system to work, all endpoints have to be able to easily communicate with one another,” Zoom marketing manager Nathan Shaw wrote in a recent blog post, where he outlined why the company was looking to become more interoperable.

“For a phone system to work, all the phones need to be able to call one another. For the internet to be a valued resource, everything has to be accessible from everywhere,” he said.

Because of the wide variety of platforms available — Zoom, Teams, Cisco, Facebook Messenger Rooms, Google Meet and Slack, among others — they “have to work together”.

“To be effective, communication has to be as easy as dialling a phone number or going to a web page. All of your workplace solutions need to interoperate, but we shouldn’t have to be engineers to get it to work,” Mr Shaw said.

Zoom Rooms with Microsoft Direct Guest Join can be used on Android, Windows and Mac-based systems.