Here’s a use case for you: you have recently switched from traditional business telephony to VoIP in a big way, with important benefits like lower costs and more flexibility. But in an unprecedented outage, your VoIP-based provider is unable to support calling via the internet, much like the recent Microsoft outage that impacted Teams and Office 365. Should you then invest in an emergency backup that can enable business continuity even during such events? Or is there a smarter way?
According to this important announcement that Microsoft slipped into its Ignite session on Teams Calling, it is definitely the latter.
Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) for Microsoft Teams is on the Roadmap
In an almost premonition-like announcement, Microsoft introduced Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA) for Teams that will soon be available through its partners/resellers. Using SBA, your PSTN connections can stay active, to support business telephony in case Office 365 or your internet connectivity as a whole is facing downtimes. We predict a lot of potential for emergency service providers, as well as users in remote locations where consistent connectivity is an issue.
And of course, it could mitigate the negative impacts of large-scale Microsoft outages like the one we experienced on the 28th of September, 2020.
What is a Survivable Branch Appliance or SBA?
SBAs have been around for a while. It is essentially a third-party device that has a blade server running multiple components like a Windows Server OS, Lync Server registrar, a PSTN gateway, and the necessary software all within a single appliance chassis. Previously, you would have to deploy as a third-party — something that is outside the reach of many small-to-mid-sized users without in-house technical expertise.
Once deployed, the appliance would keep your telephony system running on a PSTN connection (through the SBA) in case your internet or Office 365 connection is unavailable.
How is Microsoft Teams Upgrading its SBA Capabilities?
SBA for Microsoft Teams has been on the rumour mill since last year, with users looking forward to an SBA capability for Teams just like Lync or Skype for Business. In September, Tom Arbuthnot pointed out that an SBA is definitely in the works for Microsoft Teams, scheduled for release in November 2020 (worldwide).
Interestingly, Microsoft said that it was working in close collaboration with its telephony partners to get the feature off the ground. For now, we are looking at companies like AudioCodes and Ribbon Communications to facilitate the update. Ribbon plans to roll out SBA for Teams in its SBC 1000 & SBC 2000 9.0.x release, which is when Microsoft is also scheduled to make it generally available for Teams.
AudioCodes, too, will be offering Teams SBAs as part of its product lineup.
Here’s how it’ll work
SBA is currently bundled into the Teams Offline Mode. The SBA virtual machine will run Microsoft Teams on AudioCodes, Ribbon, or some other partner’s Session Border Controller to make a branch site survivable during a WAN outage.
An if this wasn’t enough, Microsoft has a game-changing P2P calling capability in the works so that Teams users could continue to make VoIP calls — eliminating almost all interruptions effectively!
See all our Microsoft Ignite Teams News
