Operator Connect: Where Are We Now?

Operator Connect has evolved quickly since its launch in March last year to now have more than 30 carriers accredited and offering the service to customers.

The programme has been received incredibly well, with Microsoft recently revealing Operator Connect Accelerator – giving a handful of trusted partners the ability to certify carriers on its behalf.

DSTNY Automate, which was known as Qunifi until its recent acquisition by DSTNY, is one of those partners and – through its collaboration with Ribbon – has already onboarded several carriers.

Speaking to UC Today, DSTNY Automate founder Mark Herbert said that demand for Operator Connect from customers is now ramping up because of its reputation for high quality.

Interestingly, he said that early interest has come from large enterprises, despite the Operator Connect procurement process being set up in an SMB-friendly way.

“It has been engineered to be very self-service, which isn’t typically an enterprise sales motion,” Herbert said.

“But the big opportunities are there in enterprises because it’s satisfying a lot of their requirements.

“I think there’s been some pent-up demand because of the transition of business to remote working and enterprises see Teams as a way to solve this because they only have one thing to deploy.

“These are big numbers as well – tens of thousands of seats at a time which gets very interesting very quickly for the operators.”

The launch of Operator Connect Accelerator means we’ll see more and more carriers onboarded over the coming months, which will drive adoption further.

Darren Lloyd, Programme Manager for Carrier Automate, said that Accelerator has slickened the process for carrier adoption, shortening the time it takes to become certified.

“It happens quite quickly now,” he said. “We’re delivering short timescales with prescriptive onboarding and low cost.

“The start-to-finish time has greatly reduced from when we did the first one, carriers just have to choose if they go down the MAPs route or ExpressRoute.

“The only delaying factor is how long it takes the carrier to connect their network to Microsoft’s, which is a requirement.”

While the ability to move quickly is certainly there, the reality is that some larger carriers will have bigger, more-complex networks that need to be connected to Microsoft’s network, which can inevitably take longer.

DSTNY Automate has a tonic for this in the form of Call2Teams, which is ‘Direct Routing as a Service’ designed specifically for carriers and channel partners. This allows carriers to get going with Teams, whilst waiting for Operator Connect status.

“With Call2Teams, the method of connecting voice to Teams is different to Operator Connect, but the end-user experience is the same and the customer can still bring their own carrier to the Teams platform.

But over the long term, Operator Connect will continue to see adoption as businesses look for a solution that provides some of the simplicity of Microsoft Calling Plans and the flexibility of Direct Routing – particularly given the early success of Accelerator”, Herbert said.

“The Microsoft Operator Connect Accelerator has ‘done what it says on the tin’, it has accelerated adoption, it also reduces costs and takes away risk,” he added.

“We have a large capacity for onboarding because the onboarding process is slick and easy, and we’re running multiple projects concurrently to support partners.”