Channel partners looking to bolster their Teams offering are currently not short of options. As I look around the industry it appears that the appetite to add a quality voice product into Teams is certainly not going out of fashion anytime soon.
There are several routes to obtaining voice services within Teams, but they are not necessarily all born equal. UC Today Publisher, Rob Scott, recently blogged about the Dark Art of Direct Routing and the Channel opportunity there. Integration is a slightly different proposition which can be favoured by those customers with complex routing needs.
Integration refers to the use of a communications platform in conjunction with the Teams client. Seamless integration will allow you to dial out from the Teams client but utilise the entire functionality of the communications platform beneath.
So… who cares?
Customers with complex routing needs are going to quickly find out that the Microsoft Teams Phone System is not even close to ‘cutting the mustard’. I recently spoke to a partner who was implementing a solution for a law firm with 600 staff. Teams was on the table for discussion (driven by the customer themselves) but they quickly realised that the need to pass voice calls between various departments and multiple layers of secretaries was something they simply couldn’t live without.
This need, for what is common functionality in many communications platforms, very quickly narrowed their options, one of which was to go with an integrated Teams proposition.
What to look out for
If you are a partner on the lookout for an integrated Teams product you need to be clear what is important to you and your customers. Essentially, you need to do a bit of digging beneath the surface.
True integration means your Teams client becomes the end point on the communications platform. This enables users to answer the calls within Teams but take advantage of all the sophisticated benefits of the rerouting beforehand. If done correctly it can be a seriously powerful combination.
Some providers like to claim ‘true integration’ with some simple trickery so make sure you probe them appropriately. With a WebRTC enabled phone system it is straight forward to write an app which will open a web page within the Teams client to make calls, this is not integration and will not come with the specialist functionality you could get if the client behaved like an end point on communications platform. There is a big difference here, make sure you can spot it.
Piecing it all together
Teams has come on leaps and bounds in 2020 and I fully expect that to continue. Users are clearly resonating with the platform and its seamless integration with the rest of the Office 365 portfolio, Microsoft recently reported 115 million daily active users which was an increase of 40 million users since April.
Those mind-boggling numbers aside it is worth asking yourself how you are going to provide the same experience your customers are getting now, but inside the Teams environment. What about call recording, contact centre or other services? You may need to go to multiple vendors to get the same functionality.
Responsible resellers will realise that there is some risk here, but it is also a huge opportunity for certain businesses. If Microsoft decides to upgrade Teams, who is responsible when half of your integrations stop working? More importantly, who has the technical capability of sorting it out?
Customers buying their Teams from an IT company may find themselves coming unstuck if they don’t have the right skills in communications, SIP, leased lines, routing, file protocols and all the other bits which come naturally to telecoms companies. Where are customers going to turn when there is problem?
We have been talking about the IT companies coming into the telecoms Channel for years. It was, and still is, a real threat. Have the tables now turned?!
