INTERVIEW Dave Reynolds - Xelion
“We speak to our partners on a regular basis and Teams has become a common subject, this tells us that
business customers are starting to ask questions.”
Dave Reynolds, UK MD of Xelion
Xelion Talks Teams
The Channel is alive with chatter around the Microsoft Teams proposition. In this interview Dave Reynolds, UK
MD of Xelion, spoke to Comms Business about how he is leveraging the power of his platform do deliver a killer
punch for resellers
CBM: Does Microsoft Teams
make sense for businesses
right now?
Dave Reynolds (DR): e
success of O ce 365 makes
complete sense for most
business and even with the
lower end Business Premium
license customers get a huge
amount of product for their
money, all the popular o ce
apps, Exchange, Power BI and
much more for less than £10
per user per month!
Microsoft launched Teams
in March 2017 with little
fanfare and bundled it with the
entry level Business Premium
subscription meaning the vast
majority of 365 users have had
access to Teams for some time.
Microsoft recently con rmed
that Skype for business is going
end of life and will be switched
o in 2021 and users will need
to migrate over to Teams.
We speak to our partners on
a regular basis and Teams has
become a common subject, this
tells us that business customers
are starting to ask questions.
ey want to see how they can
get more out of Teams and
what their trusted channel
reseller can o er them.
CBM: Is Teams ready to
replace the telephone
system?
DR: ere is no single answer
to this! O ce 365 users can
today upgrade to the E3 license
and add a license called “Phone
System” which enables the
potential to use teams to make
and receive calls.
e nal decision they will
need to make is how they want
to break out, either take some
numbers from Microsoft and
buy a minute’s bundle or nd a
direct routing partner and buy
a service similar to taking a SIP
trunk on a PBX. As of October
2019, the typical cost for the
all of the above sits at around
£27 per month per user. e
setup of Direct Routing is
complex and requires some
knowledge of PowerShell which
means customers in most cases
will also be reliant on external
expertise to set it all up which
will come with its own setup
and ongoing costs.
Answering this question
comes down to the business’s
needs. We compared a
segment of 100 of our
business customers vs Teams
Phone System and only 1
could operate with the same
functionality they take from
our service, a service that
retails for somewhere between
£10 and £20 per user per
month.
Teams Phone System has
a very limited feature set
and is missing fundamental
components that 99 per cent
of our customers use every day.
e one per cent that could
use it independently would
have to pay signi cantly more
to get the same service. We
have a number of partners with
customers that have already
gone down the full direct
routing method without fully
understanding the limitations
and are now waiting for a
solution to get back all the
features they had before such
as call recording.
CBM: What is the Xelion
strategy around Teams?
DR: We believe that those
customers that use Teams for
collaboration can still bene t
from integration with our
hosted voice service. In fact,
you could say it’s more of an
O ce 365 integrator rather
than speci c to Teams.
Using Microsoft’s graph
API we have built a new
integrator in to the core of
the O ce 365 ecosystem.
is allows us to pull data
out of 365 and push data
in, calendar and contact
synchronisation is already
live with new functions
being worked on including
sending call reports to
PowerBI, real time presence
between your Xelion device
and Teams.
For those customers
committed to using Teams
for voice we now have live
clients testing a new Teams
voice integrator that allows
the customer to use the
Teams desktop app with all
its functions as a Xelion end
point.
e Xelion team have
worked closely with wholesale
SIP specialists Zapappi on the
project, which is an extension
of the work Zapappi have done
with Direct Routing that has
already proved popular with
channel partners.
To best serve your
customers you should invest
some time in understanding
Teams and start working with
strategic partners that have
solutions that can build upon
the Teams service. At some
point in the near future I am
sure Microsoft will reduce
the license costs which will
encourage more customers
onto the Teams environment.
If they start introducing
more features you could soon
nd they are looking for a
Microsoft partner to deliver
services instead of you.
Dave Reynolds, UK MD of Xelion
48 | Comms Business Magazine | November 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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