Microsoft Teams coming to Cisco meeting room devices from 2023

Microsoft and Cisco have partnered to give customers the option to run Microsoft Teams by default on Cisco Room and Desk devices.

Announced at Microsoft’s Ingite conference to begin in the first half of 2023, the partnership will see will see the ability to run Microsoft Teams natively on Cisco Room and Desk devices Certified for Microsoft Teams, with the option of Teams as the default experience.

As a result, Cisco will become a partner in the Certified for Microsoft Teams program for the first time.

Initially, six of Cisco's most popular meeting devices and three peripherals will be certified for Teams, with more coming in the future.

The first wave of devices is expected to be certified by early 2023 and will include the Cisco Room Bar, the Cisco Board Pro 55-inch and 75-inch and the Cisco Room Kit Pro for small, medium and large meeting room spaces. Following this will be The Cisco Desk Pro and Cisco Room Navigator.

"Interoperability has always been at the forefront of our hybrid work strategy, understanding that customers want collaboration to happen on their terms -- regardless of device or meeting platform," said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's EVP and GM, security and collaboration.

Meanwhile, the first peripheral -- the Cisco Desk Camera 4K -- is a USB webcam and will be available by the end of October, followed by two headphones with a Teams button by early 2023.

"Our vision to make Teams the best collaboration experience for physical spaces is brought to life by our incredible ecosystem of hardware partners," said Jeff Teper, president, collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft.

All certified devices will be manageable in the Teams Admin Center and the new Teams Rooms Pro Management Portal, as well as through the Cisco Control Hub device management.

In addition to its partnership with Cisco, Microsoft also announced at its Ignite 2022 show in Seattle a range of new governance capabilities and other enhancements for its Power automation platform.

It also previewed new management capabilities for automated workloads in its Entra Identity governance tool, new compliance reporting tools for monitoring the roll-out of Windows updates on enterprise desktops, and a host of updates to its Azure cloud platform.