Zoom is giving the top two a run for their money, adding on powerful voice capability. CallTower announced last month the addition of Zoom Phone to its stable of UCaaS offerings, expanding on their extensive services from Microsoft and Cisco.
Zoom Phone provides customers with the ability to make voice calls alongside the conferencing calls that made them a verb during the pandemic. These plans are being offered under a "Bring Your Own Carrier" arrangement where Zoom license holders can purchase CallTower for the voice component piecemeal.
Or if they choose to streamline the process, organizations can bundle their Zoom licenses and access to CallTower's global voice under a single contract via Zoom partner CallTower.
This is all good news for organizations looking to include one of the top three UCaaS products into their workspace, improving their capacity for collaboration and communication internally and with outside partners and customers.
The addition of Zoom Phone marks the logical progression for CallTower and its customers, expanding its already expansive collection of UCaaS and CCaaS offerings, including Microsoft Teams, Direct Routing for Teams, Webex, among a host of others.
Speaking with CallTower's Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio, he tells UC Today that, "CallTower already has a strong relationship with Zoom, which we've expanded upon with our acquisition of OneStream Networks last year. Being able to provide licenses for Zoom Calling and now as a carrier for Zoom Phone helps to round out our offerings with long-time partners Microsoft and Cisco."
In a Microsoft Teams World, Why Zoom Phone?
Given the dominance of Microsoft and Cisco in the workplace, UC Today was curious as to who exactly the customer is for Zoom Phone?
"Chances are that your grandparents and kids know how to use Zoom," says Rubio, explaining that, "It became nearly ubiquitous and synonymous with conference calling during the pandemic, including for whole categories of people who had never spent time conference calling over video."
"So when it comes time for some of our customers, who may already be a Microsoft shop, to add cloud voice on top, a lot of folks we speak to want to go with Zoom because they are already so comfortable with it," he says. "Zoom is incredibly easy to use, and the pre-existing familiarity with it makes it a simpler transition for a lot of people when making a transition to the cloud for their organization."
"A lot of customers have made that decision that they're saying 'I'm using a Zoom meeting, why don't we just go ahead and tack on the phone part of it as well?'" he adds.
For a lot of customers, according to Rubio, their decision to go with Zoom comes out of an internal discovery process where they find out what works best for each of their departments.
"So maybe the dev and admin teams prefer to work with Teams, but management will discover that their sales and marketing teams are already running a shadow IT on Zoom, so the logical next step is to just make it official and give them Zoom Phone to bring everything under one sanctioned roof," Rubio explains.
While most organizations are not likely to replace their existing Microsoft Teams or voice with Zoom Phone, Rubio does see Zoom Phone as an attractive option for switching out the on-prem services like Avaya and Mitel as well as the more private label UCaaS platforms that may be floating around out there like 8x8 and RingCentral.
Why Choose Zoom Phone?
There are a slew of good reasons to give Zoom Phone a look. Here are just a few.
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People know it. They love it.
It's stable, secure, and familiar.
