Our Mission: Provide Microsoft Teams Industry Professionals the best and most up to date and insights, advice and training free on-demand

  • 15 minute video briefings from experts including Microsoft MVPs/MCMs/MCTs
  • Covering Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft Teams ecosystem
  • Updates every month to keep up with the pace of the cloud
  • Free access supported by six Industry Benefactors
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Microsoft Teams has changed Unified Communications and Collaboration forever

With 270 million monthly active users and over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies using Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams has radically changed Unified Communication and Collaboration for millions of organizations and hundreds of millions of people.

Microsoft Teams moved us from servers to the cloud and brought together Unified Communications, Collaboration and lined of business applications and wider Microsoft 365.

To meet the requirements of your organization, you will also need to choose the right ecosystem solutions for PSTN, user devices, meeting room systems, attendant console and contact center, compliance recording and perhaps additional management and reporting tools.

Your organization's success with Microsoft Teams, an ever-changing cloud solution, requires a new approach to advice, training and operations.

The Microsoft Teams

Industry Professionals challenge 

  • How do you keep up with Microsoft Teams having so many capabilities and integrations and the constant change of an evergreen cloud service?
  • Ecosystem solutions are required to complete your journey. How do you make an informed choice?
  • Where do you find up trusted, up to date advice and information?
  • How do you save time, cut the noise and ensure you know what you need to know?

The Solution.

 
Empowering.Cloud's Mission.

Empowering.Cloud's mission is to provide Industry Professionals with the best and most up to date Microsoft Teams and ecosystem insights, advice and training free on-demand

With the breadth of Microsoft Teams and the constant change, this is quite a mission. Fortunately, with the support and input of many friends at organisations using Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Partners ecosystem vendors and Microsoft, we can gather the best real world information and advice.

Empowering.Cloud is able to provide best and most up to date Microsoft Teams advice and training for Industry Professionals and make it accessible free thanks to the support from sponsors and six key industry benefactors. We thank them for their support.

Join Empowering.Cloud and get free access to

Monthly Microsoft Teams News and Updates Briefings

Microsoft Teams and the wider ecosystem are constantly evolving. Monthly Microsoft Teams and Ecosystem update from Microsoft MVP Tom Arbuthnot and Monthly Teams Development Update from Microsoft MVP Tom Morgan

Microsoft Teams and ecosystem advice from the experts

15 minute video briefings on key Microsoft Teams topics. Real-world insights from field experts, including Microsoft MVPs, MCMs and MCTs. Let us know the topics you want to have briefings on.

Leaning Paths and training to pass Microsoft Teams exams

Learning paths to help you pass and renew your MS-700 Managing Microsoft Teams and MS-720 Microsoft Teams Voice Engineer exams (720 content in progress now).

Quizzes and training completion certificates

Reinforce your learning and get ready for Microsoft Teams exams with briefing quizzes and show your expertise with training completion certificates and badges you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

Invites to in-person Empowering.Cloud events

Sharing information and advice with your peers is at the core of Empowering.Cloud's mission. As well as sharing information online, we have several in-person industry forums, events and meet-ups

Empowering.Cloud Microsoft Teams App

Get updates when we post the latest Microsoft Teams briefings, news and update right in Teams through our Teams Bot. Install it free here.

Are you a Microsoft Partner and need to train your team and keep them up to date?

Empowering.Cloud will always provide the best Microsoft Teams insights, advice and training free for Industry Professionals, it's core to our mission. Premium paid memberships provide us additional support and give everyone in the organisation these additional benefits for one price per month or per year.

Role specific and custom learning paths

A custom learning path that focuses on your specific role, for example operations, device management or service owner. Or we can create custom learning paths for your organisation.

User enrolment, management, reporting and gamification*

Proactively enrol members of your organisation on specific learning paths, report on their progress and gamify learning within your team. *In development

Priority requests for questions, research and briefing topics

As a Premium member, you will get priority on questions and suggestions for briefing topics

Private discussion areas only for premium members

Access to private community discussion forums only for premium members to ask questions and share information and advice. Partners have a specific discussion forum for just their organisation

Monthly group Q&A call with Tom Arbuthnot and expert guests

Each month a separate Enterprise Pro and Partner Pro community call to answer any questions you have or just share your experience and thoughts

Access to ask Tom Arbuthnot questions directly

As a premium member, you can reach out to Tom Arbuthnot directly with your Microsoft Teams questions

Join Empowering.Cloud Today

Individual Professional
Premium Program for Microsoft Partners


Individual Professional - Free Forever

For any Industry Professionals working with Microsoft Teams, at an end user organisation or Microsoft Partner

  • Monthly Microsoft Teams Updates
  • On-demand briefings and training
  • Exam Leaning Paths
  • Quizzes and completion certificates
Sign IN


Microsoft Partner Premium


$500 a month / $6000 a year

For Microsoft Partners, Service Providers and Operators

  • Access to premium features for everyone in your organisation
  • User Management and Reporting
  • Custom learning paths
  • Private discussion area for all partners and one for just users in your organisation
  • Monthly group partner Q&A call with Tom Arbuthnot and guest experts
  • Access to ask Tom Arbuthnot your questions
Sign UP

Tom Arbuthnot, Co-founder of Empowering.Cloud

A Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Certified Master, Tom Arbuthnot is Co-founder of Empowering.Cloud. He has spent over a decade focused on Microsoft UC and Collaboration working with many large and well known enterprises.

Alongside Tom is James Rodd, previously CEO of Microsoft UC specialist Modality Systems and Tom Morgan, Microsoft MVP focused on Microsoft Teams Development, and responsible for the Empowering.Cloud platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Empowering.Cloud really free?

Yes. Empowering.Cloud will always be free for Individual IT professionals.


It takes a lot of research, time and effort working with great experts, Microsoft and customers organisations using Microsoft Teams to keep our briefings informative and up to date. Fortunately, Empowering.Cloud is supported by six fantastic benefactors, AudioCodes, AVI-SPL, Dubber, Luware, Neat and Ribbon and a wider number of supporters. They believe in our mission and help fund the work, enabling you to access free, up-to-date, independent information.

Who is behind Empowering.Cloud?

Empowering.Cloud is co-founded by Tom Arbuthnot, a Microsoft Certified Master and MVP since 2011 and James Rodd, previously founder and CEO of Microsoft collaboration specialists Modality Systems. Tom Morgan. Microsoft MVP has created the platform (Azure based) and provides Microsoft Teams development monthly update and briefings. We are a Microsoft partner and part of the Microsoft Start-up Program. 


However, most importantly, Empowering.Cloud would not be possible without the support of a global community of experts providing insights, advice and guidance for Empowering.Cloud briefings and everyone sharing their real world experiences. Empowering.Cloud is really the combined knowledge of our community.

Why does Empowering.Cloud have Benefactors and Supporters (sponsors)?

Creating great Microsoft Teams advice and training takes a lot of time and research. Working with experts. Microsoft and organisations using Microsoft Teams is the only way to get a complete picture and provide real-world advice. We want to empower as many people as possible, the support of our Benefactors and Supporter sponsorship allows us to invest the time needed and provide the advice and training for free in a sustainable way. 


Benefactors have each made a significant contribution to supporting Empowering.Cloud and get benefits in return, including brand awareness and Tom Arbuthnot working with them directly, for example, joining webinars and co-creating product briefings for their offerings. Any content created with Benefactors will be clearly identified as such. Benefactors and Supporters have no editorial influence on our content.


Sponsors provide a smaller but still greatly appreciated level of support for nothing in return other than supporting Empowering.Cloud and the community.


Both Benefactors and Sponsors support what we do. We could not do this without them, thank you.

Do Benefactors and Supporters control or influence content?

Categorically No. Benefactors and Supporters understand and agree that Empowering.Cloud to be valuable and credible, the advice and training must be independent of any vendor, Microsoft or partner influence. As part of signing up as Benefactors, Tom Arbuthnot will work with Benefactors on webinars and product briefings which will be made available to Empowering.Cloud members, but this will be clearly identified as benefactor content and separate to Empowering.Cloud briefings and content.

What do I get when I pay for Empowering.Cloud Enterprise or Partner memberships?

You are always welcome to be part of Empowering.Cloud and access our briefings and advice at no cost. Our Empowering.Cloud Premium subscriptions are for organisations who want to proactively drive the training experience within their IT organisations, ask questions, share information and advice with peers in private discussion areas and directly ask questions.

Who will have access to my information?

We take your privacy seriously. Your personal information will not be shared with benefactors or sponsors. To deliver you a great experience Empowering.Cloud platform is built on Microsoft Azure and uses several supporting services such as Auth0 for secure authentication, Outseta for membership management and Matomo for usage analytics. For full details on how we handle your data, please see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at the bottom of this page. If you have any questions please contact hello@empowering.cloud

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