Microsoft Teams Cloud-Based Direct Routing Opportunities for Carriers

Moving voice services to the cloud is a major undertaking, offering enticing opportunities for enterprises while at the same time carrying considerable challenges. For a growing number of large enterprises, this process involves leveraging their existing Microsoft stack - and Microsoft Teams in particular - because it’s already deeply embedded in their communications and collaboration infrastructure. According to Microsoft , Teams usage has grown from 2 million users in 2017 to 20 million by the end of 2019 with exponential growth to 270 million at the end of 2021.

Enterprises have reported they would like to add telephony but need it to integrate with their existing systems domestically and internationally. Microsoft Teams has three options when it comes to external voice integration, each with specific applications across business segments:

• Calling Plans for Microsoft Teams offers small businesses the ability to enable users to call outside the Teams environments. These plans are geared to small user groups and don’t scale well economically as they bill per user.
• Microsoft Operator Connect program enables participating carriers the ability to bring and manage PSTN calling to Teams for their customers. Because Operator Connect automation can be challenging for some carriers, and enterprises have complex environments needing SIP trunking, Global PSTN access, premise gateways, etc. this option may not be the best solution every time.
• Direct Routing is a solution that enables enterprises to use their existing PSTN service provider and connect their SBCs, which are typically premised based, to Microsoft Teams Phone System. Direct Routing as a Service (DRaaS) on the other hand is an alternative, purely cloud-based solution which brings distinct advantages for service providers and enterprises alike.

It shouldn’t be surprising that early adopters of MS Teams calling typically have been small to medium-sized enterprises with the agility to pivot quickly and efficiently and have the ability to keep up with technology while avoiding significant disruption.

For large enterprises, however, a strategic recalibration of this magnitude is a complex affair. The complexity is further compounded by additional factors large-scale enterprises invariably must contend with, including multi-national, multi-site, and multi-regulatory dynamics. From culture to compliance, the cloud’s potential to modernize communications in global operations can be as tricky as it is transformational.

Besides needing a robust proof of concept, an operational transition plan, and the expertise to execute it successfully, large enterprise business leaders need the buy-in and confidence of all their key stakeholders both internal and external.

Fortunately, they don’t have to go it alone.

Picking the right Direct Routing partner

Picking the right partner, trusting they use the right tools and have the right knowledge, mindset and experience are crucial. Large, multinational organizations are looking to simplify their overall management of enterprise communications, which includes SIP Trunking, and PSTN access globally. They want a partner who can help them deal with all their legacy systems like fax machines, analog lines, and existing PBXs.

Again, these and other considerations reflect the intricate nature of cloud migration. But the terrain becomes far smoother to ride once you’ve got a partner with a deep understanding of the complexities and a mindset oriented towards navigating your unique set of challenges.

Times a-changin’ for Unified Communications

The shift to remote work ushered in by the COVID pandemic forced many businesses into thinking much more about the technology landscape and the communications ecosystem they inhabit within it. This, coupled with Microsoft’s ability to bring online a global unified communications solution in the form of Microsoft Teams, makes clear the direction many enterprises are headed - and how quickly you can slip behind your competitors.

Our approach at Kandy has been to develop a product capable of managing multi-layered complexity - from cloud-based voice services to global PSTN management, SIP Trunking, and managed premise gateways- across a range of geographical markets at the same time. By bringing together our expertise with Microsoft Teams, our own white-label, cloud-based Kandy Direct Routing as a Service (DRaaS) is the multi-tenant solution for service providers that scales to handle the largest of multi-site, global enterprises.

DRaaS provides provisioning and management of phone numbers, users, and license packages as well as managed gateways that deal with an organization’s legacy infrastructure. Our ability to integrate into carriers’ networks and enable them to extend their existing offer to their end-user customers with APIs is a real differentiator.

Carrying the carriers

Enterprises have long-standing business and trust relationships with their carriers, and they often look to them as logical providers of new solutions, like Teams, but with the integration and professional services needed for their complex networks. So it’s logical that carriers want to directly drive the purchase, monitoring, and management of their services into their back-office systems and CRMs. For that reason, we tie everything to all the back-end capabilities a carrier has in place, and we do it in a normalized, secure, and standardized way.

Our Communications as a Platform (CPaaS) solution forms the backbone of the Kandy Microsoft Teams DRaaS service and is designed in such a way that it can also integrate with carriers’ UCaaS capabilities. This is hugely significant right now since many large companies are insisting on implementing unified communications models that integrate provisioning with their own back office/employee management/onboarding systems, as well as leveraging other communications APIs such as SMS and WebRTC with their web and app development. This means more opportunities for carriers, resellers, and service providers too.

Essentially, end user organizations can now choose a savvy carrier that can help them move into a subscription-based model, integrate their existing infrastructure, and scale their service up or down according to shifting business needs.

Take control with Kandy Teams Direct Routing as a Service

Once onboarded as an end-user, enterprise admins can make changes to the setup through portals and APIs to run operations in the right way and take full control of their business. This is a substantial shift in how we’ve been processing change requests and service orders until now.

Service providers, want to learn more about Kandy’s cloud-based Microsoft Teams Direct Routing as a Service (DRaaS) solution? Submit your inquiry below under Contact Kandy and a member of our team will be glad to talk to you.