CIO OPINION
By 2034, it is estimated that over 75 % of businesses will use cloud – based rather than on – premises – based telephony services.
of making and receiving calls to and from all numbers is fully incorporated... fully unified.
The limitations of geographically defined telcos
Riding this wave, the likes of BT, Gamma, Colt, AT & T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies are all part of Microsoft’ s Operator Connect partnership programme – an operator-managed service that allows external phone calls to and from Teams. While this cannibalises their own cloud telephony solutions to some extent, it allows them to integrate their telecom capabilities with Microsoft Teams.
But, for enterprises, there are limitations to working with these telco giants, particularly when it comes to global organisations. Their legacy was laying copper wire into buildings to deliver telephony. While network provision, i. e. broadband with peripheral services on top, has replaced telephony as carriers’ primary business, their core asset of fibre and network is still very much a physical business. And, as such, they remain largely geographically defined, whereas enterprises, on the other hand, are scaling at a multinational level.
The attraction of multinational consolidation
So where does that leave multinational enterprises who are still dealing with the perceived reality of managing an international patchwork of multiple in-country carriers, contracts, tariffs, equipment and services, and the prohibitive complexity that comes with it? These multinational businesses are naturally keen to consolidate how they buy and manage telephony integrated with UC platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, globally. Why would they choose to continue managing telephony disparately and locally when they are now managing their primary Teams communications set-up centrally and globally?
With the advent of single vendor service providers capable of deploying, delivering and supporting telephony anywhere in the world – all integrated with Teams – multinational customers benefit from the equipment-free implementation of Teams cloud telephony. They can also achieve this with one global contract, one global management portal, one global tariff, and one global support team.
For the enterprise, the cost savings and operational efficiencies are compelling, and for the end users the communications are, finally, truly unified. p
46 INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA www. intelligentcio. com