If you based your expectations on the month of July about what types of companies Microsoft was looking to acquire, you could be forgiven if you believed they were only hunting for security-focused entities. After all, Microsoft did buy two different firms in recent weeks but today they are announcing that they have acquired another company but this time the focus is on Teams.
Microsoft has acquired Peer5, a company that provides WebRTC-based eCDN solution that runs in the browser and helps optimize bandwidth usage and impacts to the line of business apps running on the same network. With hybrid work increasing, Peer5’s tech will help keep your network running smoothly as bandwidth consumption inside the corporate firewall increases during the next year as employees partially return to the office.
Importantly, Microsoft says that it will continue to support CDN solutions from Microsoft certified partners in addition to Peer5 eCDN; and current Peer5 customers will be able to continue using Peer5 services. That being said, companies offering these types of solutions are likely not sleeping as easily after this announcement.
As the world slowly returns to a hybrid workforce, Microsoft is investing heavily to make sure that Teams, which is now used by 250 million users on a monthly basis, will operate as smoothly as it does today but when users are concentrated on a single network.