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Microsoft Teams Calling - how will you manage rapid, multi-site, mass deployment?

Mar. 19, 2019 By Tony Dunphy

Microsoft Teams Calling, PSTN voice calling within Microsoft Teams. Delivering quality landline and mobile calling within Microsoft Office365

There is no doubt that Microsoft Teams will dominate the Corporate and Enterprise Unified Comms market over the next five years; after all it's the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history. The Teams Calling telephony functionality inside the Teams environment is gradually evolving but isn’t on par with other corporate telephony platforms and services on the market but gap is closing fast.

Microsoft Teams Calling Fastest Growing App In Microsoft History

Microsoft Teams was launched in March 2017. Teams brings together people, conversations and content via a suite of tools allowing users to collaborate with ease and work more effectively. It’s naturally integrated with the familiar Office 365 applications and is built from the ground up on Microsoft's global, secure cloud platform.

Launched along side Microsoft Teams was the Teams Calling phone system. Teams Calling is the Microsoft technology that enables PSTN voice calling and PBX capabilities within the Microsoft Office 365 Teams environment. Teams Calling allows you to replace your existing PBX system with a set of features delivered from Office 365 so users can communicate via chat, video calls, voice calls and conferencing to people inside and outside the workplace using a single system. To date availability of Microsoft Teams Calling plans are limited to only a handful of international countries.

Comms Choice Microsoft Teams Sipconnect Infrastructure

Then this happened...

In June 2018 Microsoft launched Direct Routing, an enabler for Teams Calling phone system. Direct Routing allows customers to choose their preferred telecoms provider to enable their users to make and receive PSTN calls within Teams.

To date there are two Direct Routing vendors certified to connect to Microsoft Teams, one of which is Ribbon Communications (formally knows as SONUS). Next Telecom has been using Ribbon (Nasdaq: RBBN) Session Border Controllers (SBCs) for four years. These SBCs deliver advanced calling and security features and enable multi-site, mass deployment to any Microsoft Teams environment, quickly and efficiently.

In February Next Telecom successfully completed the first of its Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Direct Routing rapid, multi-site, mass deployments for two unique Microsoft Teams Environments (100+ user client and 500+ user client) further demonstrating the simplicity of remote and rapid deployment. The advantages Rapid Mass Deployment of Teams Calling cannot be understated in regards to simplicity. With suitable preparation, multiple sites can be provisioned with Teams PBX Calling in a matter of hours without onsite presence and geographical limitations. Think cost control, scalability, flexibility and visibility all in the one solution.

Without a doubt Microsoft Teams is a game-changer for business productivity and collaboration.

Also important to note, is that Microsoft Skype for Business and Microsoft Lync are slated for decommissioning in late 2019 with Teams Calling being the nominated replacement.

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