There has been an increase in organisations choosing international direct routing on Microsoft Teams, according to Voiceflex, which provides the service to customers via SIP breakout.
Direct routing connects Microsoft Teams to the traditional phone network (PSTN). It allows businesses to make, receive and transfer calls to and from Teams like a traditional PBX system, but without the need for a hosted telephone application or on-premise system.
It means that organisations with offices in international locations can quickly and easily connect via a single tenant. “The world’s becoming a smaller place. With Microsoft Teams, you can log on anywhere in the world. So, if you have a US number against your Teams account, then any anytime you dial out, that US number will be your outbound number,” said Paul Taylor, Sales & Marketing Director at Voiceflex.
In its favour, international direct routing is a flexible and cost-effective way for organisations to make calls within Microsoft Teams using SIP trunks to route the calls, regardless of location, said Taylor. This is particularly appealing to businesses now operating with a remote workforce.
“Companies are looking to save money. But a global customer in the UK doesn’t want to source different SIP trunks from different countries, and deal with several different providers. With international direct routing, organisations have one communications provider worldwide, and one global communication platform.”
This includes access to local emergency services. Having SIP breakout enables a user in the US, for example, to call the emergency services – even if the virtual tenant is based in the UK. The call is bounced back over the internet from that tenant, from which the call breaks out locally.
Opportunity for the channel
Microsoft Teams now has 115 million daily active users, with 95 percent of the company’s revenue influenced by channel partners. For the channel this could be an opportunity to stand out from the competition.
“If somebody has an office in France and one in the UK, and they want you to provide telephone numbers or port the numbers with two different providers, it’s easy for the reseller to get Voiceflex to do the carrier side of it, and they can concentrate on that”
As Voiceflex allows customers to port their telephone number internationally, they can reap significant cost savings. Additionally, UK employees working internationally can have local numbers assigned to them. These are then routed across the internet to the UK, again substantially reducing their call costs.
The company also provides a service called forking. “That means anybody that calls a specific number, we can either deliver it to the telephony system or deliver it to Microsoft Teams,” said Taylor. “So, customers with legacy equipment can move across to Teams or can use both at the same time. They can slowly migrate across to Teams, or they might keep users on their telephone system they’ve got in place. We do the routing inbound, but it can be on two different platforms.”
“There’s going to be lots more opportunities for resellers to add what their customer wants,” said Taylor.
