OPINION Microsoft Teams
“The opportunity with Teams is that it expands you into the 365 stack which is a wealth of opportunity in
terms of training and services.” Tom Arbuthnot, Principal Solutions Architect - Modality Systems
No gold in Teams?
Analyst Cavell Group held their Cloud Comms Summit last month for those service providers wanting to
gauge the communications landscape. There was one topic on everyone’s mind… Microsoft Teams. Here,
Tom Arbuthnot, Principal Solutions Architect, at Modality Systems shares his opinion.
On the morning of the
Cloud Comms Summit
Microsoft announced they
were giving conferencing
features in Teams to 365 users
for free for the next six months
to help them get through the
Coronavirus Pandemic. Given
the level uncertainty in the
room, and the potential for
Microsoft to disrupt a buoyant
market, attendees were keen to
nd out more about how they
might benet from Teams.
Tom Arbuthnot, Principal
Solutions Architect, Consulting
(UK) at Modality Systems
commented on the potential
threat. He said “Is it a threat?
at depends on what you are
doing as a business. At one
point, Microsoft made this
big statement that they were
going to be a rst party PSTN
minutes carrier and cover all the
countries. ey haven’t overtly
said they are backing o that
strategy, but it has been well over
a year since the last country was
added, that was Canada. It’s only
available in about 11 countries so
that’s clearly not at the forefront.
ey are clearly engaging with
carriers to provide the minutes.
If you are selling minutes (as a
service provider) you can provide
minutes for Teams in the same
way you would generate SIP
for other platforms. In terms
of your customers, if you are a
small PBX vendor, Oce 365 is
quite compelling. If you are not
engaging with the opportunity
to work with Teams, there is
a good chance, over time, if
your customer uses Teams for
meetings and can turn on voice
easily they may well do that for
some, or all, of their seats.
e opportunity with Teams
is that it expands you into the
365 stack which is a wealth of
opportunity in terms of training
and services but also very
dierent for traditional carrier or
telco’s.”
Direct Routing
Much of 2019 was spent talking
about the Direct Routing.
Fast-forward a year and more
companies are starting to oer
the service.
Arbuthnot commented,
“Direct Routing is going to be
table stakes, all of the big telco’s
are going to oer that. Most
people are going to have an
instant carrier relationship and
they are going to turn up and
move their minutes to Direct
Routing.
As a business, you aren’t going
to make your gold there, you
need to add on other services.
In our world that’s managed
services around Teams, it’s
collaboration, training, security
and adoption. It’s those pieces of
the puzzle where we add value.
What about those partners
that don’t have Microsoft skills
across the product set?
Arbuthnot continued
“It’s going to be tough, my
recommendation would be to
partner rst and check you have
a model where your customers
want to engage and your sales
force can sell it. ere is no point
hiring a load of Microsoft skill
and having them on the bench.
It will be spotty when you rst
start because you will be doing
your existing stu and a little bit
of Microsoft.
You should also consider there
will be a whole load of Microsoft
shops that previously couldn’t
really do voice and now they can
pick up white labelled Direct
Routing from anyone really
quickly. e competitive threat
from the telco provider is already
the person selling them Oce
365 and they will be telling their
customers for an extra couple of
quid they can put their phone
numbers on Teams. at is the
thing to watch.
If you are not in that story
at some point I can almost
guarantee whoever is selling 365
will be. As Microsoft get slicker
with their marketing messages
around this the competition will
only increase.”
28 | Comms Business Magazine | April 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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