Leading communications technology vendor, Audiocodes, believe that the advent of Direct Routing has made Microsoft Teams the go-to solution for intelligent communications.
Direct Routing enables an organisation to run Microsoft Teams alongside their existing Unified Communications infrastructure, allowing for a managed migration rather than a wholesale rip and replace. It allows an enterprise to simply deploy local Session Border Controllers (SBCs) that will integrate existing infrastructure and services
“Historically organisations may have been apprehensive taking the step to Skype/Teams due to contracts with their existing calls and lines provider or there may have been other 3rd party integration issues such as contact centre. But with MS allowing direct routing into Teams this really opens up the playing field massively for organisations,” explains Jay Wyatt, Technical Marketing Manager for EMEA at AudioCodes.
Jay has just spent several weeks at a number of events including Microsoft Future Decoded in London and Microsoft Experience in Paris where he’s had the opportunity to discuss the journey to Microsoft Teams with a large number of people.
“I think people are still gathering information and still understanding what it means to them.”
“The feedback was that there is a lot of interest around Direct Routing in particular and now users are asking how does it work for them, how can they adopt this technology without it being disruptive. Direct Routing allows them to do a journey to an intelligent communications solution but in their own time,” continues Jay.
Whilst Direct Routing has provided an easier path on the journey to Microsoft Teams, there is still much to be done to help customers ensure a successful deployment. Ideally situated with a portfolio that includes Session Border Controllers (SBCs), gateways and endpoints, AudioCodes are working with their reseller and service provider partners to deliver accurate and timely information.
“There’s still a lot of education to be provided as there’s still some uncertainty as to what Teams is. It was being cited as being a collaboration tool and now it’s being cited as a communication tool and a complete replacement for Skype for Business,” says Jay. “We’re providing a series of white papers which help enterprise IT Managers understand the journey to MS intelligent communications. Things they need to consider are organisational awareness and readiness, user profiling and the current way they communicate, and we have tools that can actually do network readiness assessments and help with the Professional Services. Then, when it comes to migrating to Teams, there are management tools that allow them to do this too.”
But the support doesn’t stop at whitepapers. AudioCodes One Voice Operations Centre, user management pack and IP Phone manager also integrate with MS Teams and provide that holistic one-voice approach.
“One of the challenges facing Admin is that they lots of different environments such as Microsoft Office 365, Skype for Business and Teams which is becoming difficult to manage through different portals. As such our user management pack that provides that single pain of glass to manage all their MS services,” continued James. “A lot of organisations are using teams for collaboration but they’re still finding their feet with that and understanding how that fits within their organisation. I think there’s a lot of interest but they just need to understand how they make the journey and how do they do it in a way that’s least disruptive and add most value to the business.”
