Cloud strategy company EvolveIP have just announced their new voice enablement of Microsoft Teams, Voice2Teams, which brings carrier-grade hosted telephony to Microsoft’s leading online collaboration platform. But in an online workspace environment rich with video, messaging, document sharing and planning tools, why does Microsoft need an external partner for voice?
We spoke with EvolveIP’s UK Managing Director, Paul Harrison, who explained that Microsoft and their selling partners prefer to work with local carriers to offer voice, and it is far more competitive for the end customer to operate with telephony supplied directly from EvolveIP when it comes to their call costs – especially in the UK, where mobile calling can be unexpectedly high. “We can take their call minutes and provide carrier-grade calling, but also integrate with enabled Teams features. And at the same time, you don’t need a Teams licence for the people on the road or in the warehouse and they can use their choice of IP endpoint, creating more savings. They don’t even need to have a computer.”
So to account for the needs of different users; in addition to Voice2Teams – a full BroadSoft/Cisco User license as the primary phone delivering carrier-grade telephony with Microsoft Teams – there is also Voice2Teams Plus, which brings a full the market leading BroadSoft/Cisco User license allowing other devices to be used for calling alongside Teams, such as UC One, IP Desk phone (up to 4 devices per user).
A new flexible hybrid deployment model
Voice2Teams goes live today, December 9th, and EvolveIP is running webinars to prepare partners for the new possibilities on offer.
“It’s a fully white-labelled service, for Microsoft Selling Partners enabling them to package and resell the Voice2Teams solution for their customers using their branding”
“The business case is really solid for all parties because the feature set we offer is really compelling – including everything you’d expect from a dedicated telephony service such as auto attendants, number porting, global presence, CRM integrations, Intelligent IVR and omni-channel call centre – with the familiar UI of Teams for the user”, Harrison continues. “And it’s a fully scalable cloud-based system we can provision seamlessly and fast”.
Given all the different ways to communicate already on offer within Teams, and the fact that Microsoft aren’t building the solution themselves, how important is voice communication in business today? Do we still need to talk to each other?
It’s still good to talk
Harrison is clear that we do.
“The customer journey frequently depends on voice, it’s still a vital part of the omni-channel contact centre experience”
“When you use proper carrier telephony; you can talk to anyone in the world, you can bring teams into calls and you can make it part of your collaboration process to boost your productivity.
Voice is more personal than email or messaging and Video calls are great, but they demand lots of bandwidth – after all, there’s a reason we still travel to face-to-face meetings.”
EvolveIP will be providing that backbone to your voice call even if you’re are a Teams user with Microsoft and coming in the 1st half of 2020 our new collaboration with Webex Teams – and their 30 million users.
“Our solution is agnostic and highly flexible”
Harrison continued, “If a user wants a full hosted UC solution, with or without Microsoft Teams, that’s fine, and with Webex Teams coming soon we will open the door to many more opportunities where we can complement the existing set of functions on offer, rather than competing with it.”
That sounds like a truly collaborative approach, to give the user the best of all worlds with EvolveIP
