Arguably the most elegant collaboration platform around, Microsoft Teams is taking the market by storm. Microsoft describes it as the “fastest growing application” in its history. Certainly, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft Teams had 115 million daily active users by October 2020. That’s more than a 50% rise from the 75 million that Microsoft reported almost six months prior.

The market opportunity is enormous. Like cannibalising 65 million Skype for Business users, while taking on competitors such as Google Meet, Webex and Zoom, with many 100s of millions of users between them.

But the giant leap Microsoft has made is this: alongside video and audio conferencing, screen sharing, chat, federation and more, Teams Calling can completely replace on-prem and VoIP phone systems and PBXs. Organisation-wide. Locally and globally. At home or away. Yes, really.

Right now, that may well be one of the world’s best kept secrets. Perhaps because while the average user can easily run a point-and-click Teams session, setting up the Teams Calling and Phone System elements of the solution requires a little more technical knowhow.

For example, to take full advantage of Teams Calling and Phone System the essential bits are Microsoft E5 licences, certified session border controllers (SBCs), and SIP trunks. The crucial piece of that kit is the SBC: on-prem or in the cloud, dual redundancy for resilience is advised. Microsoft itself can act as a service provider, offering Calling Plans in 12 countries but, beware, they can be expensive and other options are available.

Already, we’ve produced marketing content for three of our customers such as value propositions to help explain how they and their partners can help unscramble that bowl of techie spaghetti. That means their joint clients can get maximum advantage from investments in Microsoft Teams. Mini-use cases provide vital proof points.

Reach out to GoRefCo, we’d be delighted to do the same for you.