Optimizing Your Path Forward

with Microsoft Teams Calling

Discover the value of using a managed
service for your move to Teams for
enterprise telephony

Sponsored by Produced by
 Executive Summary
Team collaboration platforms in general and Microsoft Teams in particular
are evolving into integrated work hubs that allow seamless communications
and collaboration and improved productivity. At the same time, the
integration of calling into the same interface employees use for meetings,
within Teams, means enterprises can reduce or eliminate spending on
telephony infrastructure and PSTN connectivity.
This dovetails with the trend to support BYOC options, such as Direct Routing
for Microsoft Teams, that allow enterprises to use a SIP trunking provider of
their own choosing to support voice calling. But migrating to Teams calling
can be a challenge, especially when taking technology, people, process
change into account.

Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Making the Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Best Practices in Crafting a Migration Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

OPTIMIZING YOUR PATH FORWARD WITH MICROSOFT TEAMS CALLING 2

 Introduction
By just about any industry watcher’s measure, team collaboration platforms
3 Reasons to Embrace are rising in importance within the enterprise as companies look to enable
Cloud Calling seamless communications and collaboration among employees, as well
as externally, while at the same time optimizing team-based work and
1. Achieve seamless improving productivity across the board. Team collaboration platforms meet
communications by this twofold goal because they support traditional unified communications
integrating calling into your
meeting interface
(UC) capabilities of voice, video, and conferencing as well the mainstay
collaboration functions of messaging, content sharing, and shared, persistent
2. R
 educe or eliminate workspaces. IT research firm Omdia writes about the significance of team
spending on telephony collaboration platforms in a recent Market Radar report, stating: “The ability
infrastructure and PSTN
to communicate, collaborate, and work collectively has a significant impact
connectivity
on the way people work and function as a team.” This is especially important
3. Better manage call quality considering today’s reality that many teams are now typically “diverse,
distributed, and increasingly more digital.”
In its report, Omdia encourages enterprises to view team collaboration as a
long-term strategic investment that replaces traditional UC solutions — but
not to make future purchasing decisions based only on their legacy UC and
PBX infrastructure since that’s already a sunk cost. Rather organizations
should assess their choice of team collaboration platform on three criteria:
1. How its capabilities align to business needs
2. Its ability to improve collaboration among employees and with external
parties, such as business partners and customers
3. Its potential for simplifying workflow processes through automation (this
latter point being the evolutionary path for team collaboration platforms)
Given the promise of these platforms, team collaboration is a crowded
market, with legacy UC and myriad other types of providers trying to
capture enterprise mindshare. Nonetheless, Microsoft Teams consistently
gets leadership positioning among industry watchers and the deployment
nod within the enterprise. In its Market Radar, for example, Omdia rated
Microsoft’s team collaboration platform best among seven providers it
evaluated for its “all-around, cross-category functionality.” Besides its
positioning as an “integrative work hub and natural extension to productivity
with the Microsoft 365 suite,” another reason Teams earned Omdia’s top
recognition is in its ability to provide a communications service that can either
replace or augment existing PBXs. Particularly noteworthy is Microsoft Direct
Routing, a “bring your own carrier,” or BYOC, option that enables connectivity
between Teams and an enterprise’s existing voice service provider. Using
Direct Routing, enterprises have the opportunity to leverage their current
competitive calling plans or contract periods rather than having to add in a
Teams calling plan from Microsoft.

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 This rise of team collaboration in general and Teams in particular, with the
availability of its BYOC option via Direct Routing, is driving IT leaders to revisit
Why BYOC? their telephony strategies. Many are shifting to the cloud for calling, with
several goals in mind, including the ability to:
With a bring-your-own-carrier
option like Microsoft Direct • Achieve seamlessness of communications and collaboration among
Routing, enterprises can
realize benefits such as:
employees and with external colleagues, with the integration of calling
into the same interface they’re using for meetings
1. Cost savings
• Reduce or eliminate spending on telephony infrastructure and PSTN
2. R
 etained control over dialing connectivity, given that so much calling has shifted to those above-
plans and phone numbers mentioned meeting applications
3. Run SIP and TDM trunks • Better manage call quality, particularly for
side by side during work-from-home employees
migration period
In a recent No Jitter blog post, Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research, shared
a variety of benefits enterprises can gain in using a BYOC option like Direct
Routing for Teams. They include:
• Cost savings – Nemertes research finds the average per-user, per-
month spend on PSTN access for domestic and international calling is
$7.91 for businesses using BYOC with Direct Routing to connect their
SIP trunking provider to Teams (usage-based fees for international
calling not included); this compares to an average monthly spend of
$12 for domestic plans and $24 for international plans when using a
Microsoft calling plan
• Ability to retain control over dialing plans and phone numbers
• Ability to solve the thorny porting issue by enabling companies to run
SIP trunks alongside existing TDM trunks as they transition call control
to the cloud

Making the Decision

Despite such benefits, making the decision to move away from traditional
telephony infrastructure and use Teams alone for voice calling can be
daunting. This is not a matter of simply flipping a switch but rather requires
careful and considered migration planning that accounts for a range of factors,
from PSTN connectivity to network topology, security, routing, high availability,
redundancy, and more. But in many respects, the technology plan is the
easy part. For an organization centered on and long familiar with managing
traditional voice infrastructure, the people and process changes that come
along with the use of Teams for calling can be far more challenging — and
disruptive for those that don’t plan accordingly. Even deciding who should staff
a Teams migration that involves enterprise telephony can be problematic.

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 Let’s explore a few people-oriented dilemmas that might arise.
1. Telecom vs. Cloud Communications Expertise – Obviously, if your organization
has decided to proceed with using Teams for enterprise telephony, the
migration team needs to include somebody who understands the current
telecom environment as well as all requirements going forward. But
who might that be? Traditionally, responsibility for keeping the voice
infrastructure humming has fallen to telephony experts on staff — your
telecom (or UC/PBX), managers, and engineers. But these professionals
will have established their chops and honed their expertise working with
legacy on-premises systems, and they very well may not possess the
competencies and experiences of working with cloud communications. If
your organization is adopting the BYOC/Direct Routing model for enterprise
telephony, you’ll need to continue supporting existing voice infrastructure.
Does that mean you need to keep some of your legacy telephony experts
on staff to support that infrastructure while retraining others or hiring
additional staff to support voice calling in Teams?
2. MAC Overkill – For Teams, Microsoft supports task automation and
configuration management via its PowerShell framework, which consists
of a command-line shell and scripting language. This is essential for
customization and requires somebody on board who has heavy-weight
integration expertise. But would this same person be expected to administer
simple move, add, change (MAC) services for voice within the Teams
environment? That would not be a wise use of internal resources.
3. Security Sensibilities – Enterprise telephony, including call recording, brings
with it a host of security issues with which IT security professionals might
not be familiar — or even know to scope out. So, who will hold responsibility
for making sure security is in place for voice calling within Teams?
The process piece is equally as challenging. The value in Teams is in providing
seamless communications and collaboration and improved productivity.
Optimizing a Teams deployment is imperative in achieving these goals. That
means understanding the varied needs of all enterprise users, including front-
line workers, and delivering the right capabilities to each of them while at the
same time assuring consistency of experience and not over-reaching on the
budget. You’ll need insight from business leaders but will need to be careful
that they don’t mire down the planning with unrealistic or off-base goals.
Like with any similar sort of project, these sorts of considerations and
decisions have the potential to bog down a Teams migration with enterprise
telephony. But enterprise organizations don’t have to go it alone. Rather, they
can offload the heavy lifting to and get ongoing support for Teams enterprise
telephony from a fully managed, end-to-end service such as AudioCodes’s
Live for Microsoft Teams. With this managed Teams service, AudioCodes can
fast-track a Teams voice migration by helping enterprises craft their project
plan, understand their vision for Teams use, assess risk, and properly budget
via subscription pricing.

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 Best Practices in Crafting a Migration Plan
Of course, no two enterprises will be alike in their Teams telephony
requirements and migration needs. Regardless of where a company is
starting from or where it wants to end up, a high-level, but intensive,
workshop aimed at uncovering all necessary requirements — across
technology, people, and processes — and providing next-step guidance
can make all the difference not only in a migration’s success or failure, but
also in whether the project gets budget approval in the first place. Consider
a workshop to be like a pilot test, in that it should flush out all project
considerations and provide the confidence an enterprise needs to proceed
with enterprise telephony for Teams. A Teams voice migration workshop
doesn’t just entail project planning. It needs to explore the enterprise’s
vision for Teams, as well as provide risk register and assess budgetary
considerations.
At a high level, here’s what to expect in a workshop for Teams Calling.
Project Planning – This includes defining policies and policy control for
different types of users and exploring which policies will carry forward from
the legacy telephony into the Teams voice environment. A Teams migration
offers an opportunity to take a deep dive on usage profiles, and user persona
mapping should be part of project planning. This isn’t just about merely
auditing PBX lines. That’s not beneficial. Rather, the goal should be to update
or confirm existing or to create new usage profiles and match desired
experiences for those profiles to Teams calling requirements and devices.
A manufacturing company, for example, might have five different usage
profiles for knowledge workers and two for people working on the plant
Workshop floor, among others. The executive knowledge worker persona might require
Walkthrough standard and extension-based dialing and paging whereas the HR knowledge
worker persona might only need standard dialing and paging.
A Microsoft Teams voice
migration workshop needs Device strategy is part and parcel of this persona mapping. An array of desk
to comprise four primary
and conference phones are certified for use with Teams, so it’s important
areas of focus, as follows:
that the usage profile designate which type of device is necessary —

Project Planning Vision Planning Risk Register Budgetary Guidance

• Policy definition • Usage profiles • Network requirements • TCO, ROI, other metrics
• Policy control • User experience • Security requirements • Monthly spend
• Persona mapping • Policy assessment
• Device strategy • Rollout specifics

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 no need to dole out the latest and the greatest to someone who will barely
touch a phone in their role. That executive profile might need a high-end “kit”
— desk or speakerphone with headset — while the HR profile only needs a
standard desk phone. And this planning shouldn’t stop at the usage profile.
A device strategy must take management into account — who does what,
and when — and the upgrade cycle. The device-as-a-service model, through
which enterprises can purchase Teams phones in a subscription, should be
an option, as it is, for example, with AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams.
Project planners should assess how the ability to buy devices in this way
might change deployment decisions.
Vision Planning – Teams calling isn’t just about giving somebody dial tone.
It’s about envisioning how the role could benefit from optimizing the user
experience and increasing productivity by unlocking additional Teams
functionality. Would this usage profile benefit from access to a file repository,
the ability to conduct video chats, or a Salesforce integration, for example?
During the workshop, your managed service provider should help you paint a
picture of what Teams use looks like throughout your organization. Perhaps
the plant managers at that manufacturing company not only should have a
DECT headset or mobile device that allows them to move away from their
desks and roam the floor, but also access to video devices that would allow
them to show engineers what they’re seeing on the floor.
Risk Register – This means taking the time to scope out network and security
requirements, determine policies, and define rollout specifics — leaving no
stone unturned. What does the topology look like when using Direct Routing
for voice calling, for example? Where is resiliency required? Should the
session border controller be on-premises or in the cloud? Do you have any
analog devices to support? How do we support 911? And so on. By exposing
and opening up every potential issue to discussion, your managed service
provider should be able to head-off any decision paralysis that might creep in
during migration planning.
Budgetary Considerations – You want to walk away from Teams migration
planning with a complete understanding of key financial metrics like total
cost of ownership and return on investment. You’ll want a managed service
with no-caveat per user, per month pricing that can map out where your
breakeven point is and help you sell a Teams migration for voice to upper
management.
Workshop planning should be a checklist item when evaluating managed
services providers for a migration to Teams calling.

OPTIMIZING YOUR PATH FORWARD WITH MICROSOFT TEAMS CALLING 7

 Conclusion
Team collaboration platforms in general and Microsoft Teams in particular
are evolving into integrated work hubs that allow seamless communications
and collaboration and improved productivity. At the same time, the
integration of calling into the same interface employees use for meetings,
within Teams, means enterprises can reduce or eliminate spending on
telephony infrastructure and PSTN connectivity.
This dovetails with the trend to support BYOC options, such as Direct
Routing for Teams, that allow enterprises to use a SIP trunking provider of
their own choosing to support voice calling. Despite the benefits, moving to
Teams calling can be daunting for companies supporting legacy telephony
infrastructure. That’s where AudioCodes comes to the rescue, with the
AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams managed service, which provides not
only the technology expertise required but also all the people and process
guidance needed, too, to optimize a Teams Calling migration.
Learn more here

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