Dive Brief:

• Microsoft announced Tuesday that Microsoft Stream, its enterprise video service, is now generally available as a standalone service and for Office 365 Enterprise customers, according to a company blog.

• Stream allows people inside any organization to upload, share, manage and view videos inside Office 365 applications like SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and Yammer. The service is integrated with Office 365 Groups, which means every group has a designated channel — making it even easier to manage content across teams.

• Microsoft originally previewed Stream last year. Since then its added intelligent features like speech-to-text transcribed audio, face detection and linked time-codes.

Dive Insight:

Use of video within the enterprise is up, and Microsoft wants its enterprise customers to be able to organize and seamlessly share those videos, whether they are for training or cross-company information sharing. Creating a video hub for the enterprise could help companies better track and organize video assets.

Video in the enterprise can improve communication, connect geographically diverse teams and improve training, according to a recent survey from Kaltura. But this also broadens Microsoft's collaborations footprint. 

In the past year, Microsoft has worked to expand its collaboration suite, creating a robust set of applications that create a thread of communication throughout the enterprise. The company is even going back to rethink enterprise mainstays like Skype, revamping services to better fit into its suite.

The more intuitive its functionalities, the more likely Microsoft will be able to dominate the space. With better communication and more seamless tools, Microsoft shops will be less likely to stray.