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Coexistence beats consolidation: why running the Zoom and Microsoft platforms together is the smarter play
7 min read
Published on September 28, 2026
As the Leader for Zoom's business in the Americas, Chris leads a large team of sales and channels resources, building and executing a plan to accelerate Zoom's Americas business to double-digit growth. With Zoom's modern, AI-first collaboration solution we increase our customers productivity, drive employee engagement, strengthen customer relationships, and enable seamless workflows for customers and enterprises of every size.
Prior to Zoom, Chris was a VP for Cisco's Collaboration business unit, owning global GTM and Hybrid Work strategy. During this time Chris introduced the Webex Suite accelerating to a $2B business and turned around Cisco's devices (phones and video) business resulting in video being one of the fastest growing $1B+ businesses at Cisco.
In 25 years at Cisco, Chris was focused on customer business outcomes with numerous roles, including: Data Center Product Sales Specialist, Account Manager, Regional Sales Manager, Global Video Sales leader, Video Startup leader ($0-$100M business in three years), Americas Collaboration Sales Leader (double digit CAGR over five years), and VP Collaboration strategy. He has consistently achieved year-over-year sales growth, including 17 of 20 years exceeding stretch sales objectives at Cisco.
Prior to joining Cisco, Chris was a rising sales leader at Anixter, Ameritech, and ArrowPoint Communications. He has extensive experience in Enterprise Networking, Data Center, Collaboration and Video solutions including SaaS, Cloud, and GTM strategies.
Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Washington and has attended Stanford Graduate School of Business with an emphasis on leadership development/innovation.
By Chris Barwick, Head of Americas Sales at Zoom
Most enterprises already run the Zoom and Microsoft platforms side by side. Not because anyone drew it up that way on a whiteboard, but because it works. Microsoft handles the productivity layer: email, documents, and calendar. Zoom handles collaboration: meetings, phone, contact center, rooms, and events. Ask the people who actually use these tools every day, and they will tell you the split feels natural.
So it is worth questioning why the industry keeps framing this as a choice. Zoom Workplace or Microsoft 365. One platform or the other. The organizations getting great results are not choosing. They are using both, on purpose, and getting more out of each because of it. Coexistence done intentionally beats consolidation done by default.
Microsoft's playbook has been bundling core productivity applications with "good enough" peripheral software for almost 20 years. To justify ever-increasing prices, they tell customers they can reduce the complexity of their tech stack and save money by eliminating spend on redundant vendors. This has worked very well for Microsoft, transforming them into one of the largest and most dominant companies in the world. It hasn't always been good for customers or end users, and it has often stifled industry innovation. For most companies, the promises of lower complexity and lower costs sound cleaner in the pitch than they hold up in practice.
You have heard the pitch, probably more than once. "You already have Teams. It's bundled into your Microsoft 365 license. Why pay for anything else?" It usually arrives with a nudge: your Microsoft prices are going up unless you buy more, so consolidate everything onto Microsoft and cut the redundant partners loose.
It sounds tidy. It sounds cheaper. And then you have to actually live with it.
Here is the metaphor I keep coming back to: the collaboration iceberg. On the surface, Teams looks free. Below the waterline, the costs stack up fast. Teams Premium adds $10 per user per month for advanced meeting features, meeting summaries, and call queueing. Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) is $40 per conference room per month. Copilot runs $30 or more per user per month for AI. What started as "already included" becomes dozens of line items across a stack of separate SKUs.
If you think E7 is only $99 per user/month, or CoPilot is only $30 per user/month, then watch Patrick Kelley's "Microsoft 365 E7: The $99 License Trap You Need to Know".
The numbers tell the story plainly. At street pricing, a 1,000-seat enterprise pays roughly twice as much for Microsoft's full collaboration stack as it would for the equivalent from Zoom. Add Teams Phone to the picture, and the gap widens: for organizations that unbundled Teams following Microsoft's commitments in the EU, the Microsoft 365 suite runs about 2.5 times higher.
Picking on Microsoft's pricing is beside the point. The real issue is the trap itself: consolidation for its own sake is a default, not a strategy. And defaults have a way of getting expensive while adding complexity and delivering a poor end-user experience.
It is true that Microsoft provides Teams Meetings and Chat for free in E1, E3, E5, and E7. At the surface level, that would seem to be an opportunity to save money and eliminate redundant spend, but let's dig a little deeper.
Even if you eliminate half of these vendors and settle for Microsoft, the platform consolidation promise does not hold. In practice, you still end up managing multiple tools, just with fewer alternatives and less leverage.
Before you consolidate, there is a question worth sitting with: what does this cost you in three years, not three months?
Going all-in on E5 and stacking Copilot, Teams Premium, and the rest assumes the price you sign for today is the price you live with tomorrow. Microsoft's track record points the other way. Gartner advises Microsoft customers to plan for total software costs to climb 30 to 50 percent over a three-year span, driven by a mix of list-price increases, eroding volume discounts, and product-mix changes that push you onto pricier bundles.*
That kind of increase rarely shows up as a single, obvious line on a renewal. It arrives quietly. Features move between SKUs. Capabilities you already use get repackaged as new paid add-ons. An "expanded access" announcement introduces a new fee where there was not one before.
Standardizing everything on one vendor concentrates that exposure. When the platform you built your collaboration around raises prices, reshuffles features, or retires the ones your teams depend on, you have limited room to push back and no ready alternative. Running the Zoom and Microsoft platforms together keeps the bargaining power where it belongs — with you — and caps the downside of any single vendor's roadmap.
Meeting summaries are essential because they turn spoken conversation into clear, actionable plans that keep teams aligned and accountable. The context of these discussions is often much more important than any content that was shared. On average, I have between 15-20 meetings a day. If I didn't have time to attend a meeting, I absolutely don't have time to watch a meeting recording. However, I can consume a 30-60 minute meeting in just minutes with an effective meeting summary. I need these meeting summaries across all meeting types (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Webex, in-person meetings, conference room discussions, etc.). I need AI to automatically identify speakers and action items, assign them, and be available for queries across multiple meetings at a later date.
The vast majority of modern knowledge workers will need these same capabilities to be productive and get their work done. Microsoft requires Teams Premium $10 per user/month per user/month, or CoPilot $30 per user/month, to get meeting summaries that work on Microsoft Teams meetings. In other words, Microsoft Teams Meetings really aren't free.
My Notes is included at no additional cost in paid Zoom plans and captures conversations across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, and in-person discussions. It summarizes what was discussed, pulls out action items, and builds a running record filtered to what matters to you specifically. Workflows handle the follow-up: summaries go to Slack or Team Chat automatically, so nothing falls through the cracks.
The part that actually changes how I work: I can sit in a Microsoft Teams meeting, have My Notes capture and summarize it from my perspective, and route that summary to my team without buying Teams Premium or bolting on a separate notetaker. It just works, regardless of where the meeting happened.
Coexistence is what happens when you let each platform do the job it is genuinely best at. Far from a consolation prize, it is the setup that lets you get the most out of both.
None of that diminishes what Microsoft does well. The Microsoft 365 productivity suite, from email and documents to calendars, SharePoint, and OneDrive, is deeply embedded in how most organizations work, and the Zoom platform integrates closely with the most widely used parts of it, right down to real-time document co-creation. Teams, on their own, leave gaps in collaboration. Webinars and events, meeting summaries, contact center, and workspace management are either missing entirely or locked behind premium SKUs. Running both platforms with intent closes those gaps, and does it at a lower total cost in most scenarios.
See it in action. Join Patrick Kelley and the Zoom team demo exactly how tightly Zoom and Microsoft co-exist.
The customers who run this way say the same thing.
Dan Clark, Senior Network and Security Administrator at MDaudit, explains: "We use both Microsoft Teams and Zoom Workplace for calls and meetings. We feel that the Zoom Workplace Apps are superior in the cybersecurity and compliance areas, so endeavor to push our users to utilize Zoom Workplace whenever they need to contact a customer and discuss sensitive information."
François Lavallée, President of Aliter Concept, puts it more bluntly: "I alternate between Teams and Zoom to facilitate meetings with my clients. Although Teams has improved, it is still far behind Zoom in terms of ease of use and functionality."
The winning cross-platform collaboration strategy is the one that actually performs, not the one that attempts to consolidate your tech stack to justify ever-increasing costs.
The organizations that take this approach pick the right tool for each job rather than picking sides, and they refuse to accept "good enough" as the ceiling. Do that, and the results speak for themselves: in the experience your teams have every day, in the capabilities you unlock, and in what you keep off the renewal order.
For the vast majority of customers, coexistence between Zoom and Microsoft beats consolidation efforts. Leverage Microsoft for their productivity tools, while you provide Zoom for the world's best AI-First real-time Collaboration platform and do it at a more predictable and lower cost. Your end-users and customers will thank you for it.
