Supplement Microsoft 365 with Best of Breed New Work Hub Services

In January I introduced the concept of the New Work Hub. It was defined as an assembly of differentiating team productivity applications created for employees with diverse needs. You can augment it with development, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and analytics services. Most Gartner clients we speak with consider Microsoft 365 as the foundational new work hub service.

The truth is there are a lot more services beyond Microsoft 365 out there.  Data from Gartner and others prove that IT leaders are willing to spend when needed. We also recently published 5 Digital Workplace Myths That Impede Workforce Digital Dexterity to help dispel this myth and provide guidance on how to move forward. As we were prepping this research for publications, two things happened.

1. Gartner’s Governing, Managing, and Succeeding with Microsoft Office 365 Survey was being conducted
2. Okta released its annual Business at Work report which provides data on what services its customers are using

That data from the Gartner survey showed that 60% of participants are using some other collaborative services beyond Microsoft 365.

This included services from across the new work hub, including Atlassian, Zoom, Miro, Slack, Mural, SmartSheet, and Google Workspace to name a few.

Okta’s report pulled from more than 14,000 of their global customers, and raised two key points with a huge impact on the evolution of the new work hub:

• For the first time since Okta started running the report, five collaboration services made this list as the fastest-growing apps. (Notion, Figma, Miro, Airtable, and monday.com)
• Among Okta customers deploying Microsoft 365, 45% are supplementing with best-of-breed services, including new work hub services such as Box, Google Workspace, Slack, Smartsheets, and Zoom.

We primarily use Microsoft 365, but others certainly trickle in, depending on audiences, relationships, etc.

Particpant Feedback From: Governing, Managing, and Succeeding with Microsoft Office 365 Survey

To be clear in most cases these are NOT enterprise-wide implementations of these services, context is king. Being strategic with picking the right services for the right use case will be important. This could include frontline workers, healthcare professionals, marketing, and sales. To get to the context you must first determine which departments will get the most value from supplemental services (usually those tied to driving the business goals) and identify the gaps that Microsoft 365 has that may impede reaching those goals.

Recommended Reading:

Market Guide for Collaborative Work Management

Market Guide for Visual Collaboration Applications

Market Guide for Workstream Collaboration

Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions

Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms