Ecosystem Shift and Objectives
Tech independence has become a top priority for Russian business. Among the priorities is substituting imported services for commercial communications. Many foreign providers have halted accepting payments from Russian cards or suspended services, sometimes without warning. When that happens, a company may lose meetings, exchange messages, or even access data stored on a platform.
Even during the epidemic, MTS Group explored adding a video communication service to its ecosystem. In 2022, Russia’s business communication platform Webinar emerged as a winner in the CIPR Digital 2023 jury’s category for Best Digital Platform. On October 19, 2023, it was announced that all Webinar solutions would merge under a new brand, MTS Link, signaling a shift in business strategy.
The aim was to unify various products into a single communications platform for business communications (UCaaS), delivering all services through one interface.
Ecosystem
Today, the MTS Link ecosystem brings together four cloud services: Meetings, Webinars, Boards, and Courses. They support all types of team interaction in remote and hybrid setups—from daily standups to collaborative work, corporate training, and the creation of training courses. The tools also include metrics to measure audience engagement and marketing performance.
Additionally, corporate messaging Chats are set to be included in the portfolio and are currently undergoing testing. All MTS Link services are integrated with one another and with common corporate applications.
During online meetings, participants can use an interactive whiteboard, draft meeting results with accountable contributors, and automatically email the summary to everyone. Meeting recordings can be made available for colleagues who cannot attend. Webinar recordings can be repurposed into online courses for new hires or staff development, with surveys and polls to guide the training process.
In practice, delivering all communication through a single platform is more convenient than juggling multiple services. A unified platform creates a comfortable, functional digital environment for internal collaboration and for working with partners. Integration with other applications enables sending invitations and using familiar analytics tools, such as calendar-based meeting creation.
The platform is suitable for teams of all sizes, but its potential shines in large organizations with many employees, partners, and customers. For example, the largest Russian retailer X5 Group uses MTS Link to host up to 50 events daily, with around 1,500 participants total per day.
Practical use
Currently, MTS Link products are used by more than 10,000 companies, including leading players in the Russian economy such as X5 Group, Renaissance Insurance, Avito, hh.ru, RESO Garantiya, 1C-Bitrix, and Rusagro.
According to MTS Big Data, the first half of 2023 saw MTS Link lead among domestic video conferencing services in mobile traffic growth. Overall, in the Russian video conferencing market, MTS Link ranked third after Skype and Zoom.
MTS Link is used by more than 90 top Russian universities, including Saint Petersburg State University, RUDN University, Innopolis, Kazan, and Far Eastern Federal Universities, Sechenov University, and Moscow Polytechnic University. This year, through the platform, more than 2,000 applicants from across the country could access remote consultations for admission to GITIS as part of the Generation M initiative, which supports children. Teachers conducted online master classes to help with admissions through MTS Link.
Webinars, training, and events
The Link Webinars service enables online training and events for up to 30 speakers and 5,000 participants simultaneously. All participants can join via a browser without installing software or registering, while mobile apps for Android and iOS are available.
The Connection Courses service helps create a training course from any content, adds tests, and tracks student progress. The platform supports brainstorming, strategic sessions, and group training with its own interactive online whiteboards. Former competitors like Miro users can transfer completed boards to MTS Link. Link Meetings is the only Russian video conferencing product offering a complete API with individual audio tracks for speakers. The Connection Meetings service supports up to 200 simultaneous participants in a video conference.
MTS Link already leverages AI for noise suppression, background replacement and blurring, and advising on training progress. In the near future, it will generate a final meeting summary with task lists and deadlines. In addition to live communication, automatic webinars are available where viewers can interact via chat, ask questions, and engage in conversations during video recordings. Features like chat, reactions, voting, quizzes, and surveys help boost audience engagement and assess mastery of material.
Analytics, branding, and technical details
Organizers can monitor engagement by tracking participant movement across windows. All services include analytics tools, with UTMs to track how attendees arrive and to measure promotional channel effectiveness and cost per attendee. Branding allows customization using corporate identity elements to design a webinar room or training course.
On the technical side, MTS Link integrates with common office applications. Meetings and events can be scheduled via Google Calendar, MS Outlook, Communigate Pro, and My Office, with invitations sent by email. A single space on the platform can be accessed via a single link for regular planning sessions and meetings.
Products are compatible with hardware video conferencing terminals from Cisco, Polycom, and Yealink thanks to SIP and BFCP protocol integration. This enables high-quality hybrid meetings, incoming calls, and seamless content sharing. MTS Link supports WebRTC for high image quality and full presence. SSO single sign-on enables quick, secure access across resources, which is especially important for large organizations maintaining strong information security.