Companies that do business with the US government are no strangers to meeting security compliance regulations. Crossing your Ts and dotting your Is comes with the territory.
But for those organizations that work with the Department of Defense, there is a whole other level of regulations and restrictions that need to be met. This includes rules over which types of software and communications tools your organization is allowed to use, even down to the version of Microsoft 0ffice 365.
For these organizations that answer to a higher authority (apologies to the kosher franks folks), Microsoft’s Government Commercial Cloud High (GCC High) offering is the only game in town. Eligible organizations can obtain access to this specialized, locked down version through Volume Licensing for their Azure.
There are a number of features that make GCC High special. The fact that it meets all of the requirements for working with sensitive information environments is a big one. Regulatory standards like FedRAMP, NIST, CMMC, DFARS 7012, ITAR — it has all of these covered in spades.
But for organizations that have to work with the defense sector, GCC High is notable for what it lacks.
Bringing Voice to Teams on GCC High
In the balance between security vs usability, GCC High has time and again opted to lock down potentially risky features. This makes sense and comes with the territory in the defense sector.
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Bill Wootton[/caption]
Unfortunately, in this case, it meant that GCC High users were unable to make use of voice services for Teams, which was plenty frustrating as it became a standard tool for unified communications across all other industries. Then, finally in February, voice was approved to come to Teams, thus improving the experience by making it easier to collaborate on a single platform and bringing it up to the same level of robust service as the commercial version.
Speaking with Bill Wootton, the President of C3 Integrated Solutions, one of the limited number of integrators that are authorized to provision Microsoft Office 365 GCC High to smaller businesses, he tells UC Today that, “With the challenge of the global coronavirus pandemic and the evolving nature of the workplace, more and more companies are demanding collaborative voice and audio-conferencing options within C3’s GCC High solutions.”
Wootton explains that especially in the defense sector, having the ability to connect with people outside of the Teams environment is important for his customers due to the diversity of his market. “There are a wide variety of company types within the defense industry,” he says, noting that, “They can range from a large corporation to a small machine shop, so it’s not a guarantee that everyone has access to Teams.”
The lack of a voice option was one of the biggest challenges for their GCC High clients says Wootton. “In many cases, this slowed adoption, or added complexity to the transition, which hampered productivity, creating frustration.”
Adding to the challenge for users was that like in the standard commercial version of Teams, making calls to phone lines and allowing dial in calls required working with a Direct Routing provider for their PBX and PSTN services. This meant that for Wootton and C3, they had to find a partner that could provide them with the voice component in order to offer their customers the full value of working on the Teams platform.
