Feature-rich voice solution for Microsoft Teams radically simplifies Direct Routing, showcasing the revenue opportunity for CSPs to modernize core voice infrastructure with the cloud

Alianza, Inc. today introduced Alianza for Microsoft Teams, a new and powerful solution that gives service providers a robust cloud PBX voice solution for Microsoft Teams.

Many communication service providers (CSPs) struggle with the complexities and hidden costs of setting up telephony for Microsoft Teams via Direct Routing or Operator Connect. In many cases, they are forced to employ a third-party Microsoft partner to manage a Teams integration on their behalf. Alianza for Microsoft Teams ensures successful implementation by automating the voice configuration between the customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant and the Alianza platform — without specialized expertise or expensive network elements like session border controllers (SBCs).

With Alianza for Microsoft Teams, both CSPs and Teams administrators bypass the heavy lift and complex configuration of the voice calling and user policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center.

Highlights of Alianza for Microsoft Teams include:

• Unprecedented Automation. A two-step deployment to add licenses and sync, it’s that simple. Alianza has simplified Direct Routing for PSTN and PBX provisioning, which eliminates the heavy technical lift for CSPs.
• Robust PBX Feature Set. Comprehensive calling features support knowledge workers who live and breathe Teams, while continuing to support non-Teams users within the organization who are primarily reliant on traditional telephony functionality and devices.
• Superior PSTN Coverage. Wide rate renter coverage ensures CSPs can provide telephone numbers wherever their Teams users are located.
• Extensive CPE Interoperability. Alianza for Microsoft Teams supports a wide variety of SIP endpoints ranging from IP phones to high density analog gateways, including devices from Cisco, Yealink, and Poly, empowering CSPs with the ability to deploy the right devices for their customers.
• Faster Time to Market. Alianza for Microsoft Teams can be enabled and set up in minutes so CSPs can take advantage of the Teams opportunity immediately as opposed to the typical 12-month deployment timeframe.
• Administrative Ease. With Alianza for Microsoft Teams automation, CSPs don’t need to define the SBC and PBX templates every time they sign up or move an end user to the Teams integration. In addition, PowerShell scripting is not required to build, test, and deploy, meaning zero extra work for the Teams Admin.
• Security. End-to-end encryption of both signaling and media is enforced between the integration and Microsoft 365. Additionally, administrative access is controlled by Azure/Microsoft 365 single sign-on; no user credentials are stored by the portal.

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With 280 million Teams monthly active users globally, only 30% of which are active Teams Phone users and a much smaller percentage with PSTN, there is a massive market opportunity for CSPs to build their “with Teams” strategy and capitalize on the large and growing Microsoft’s Team ecosystems.

Although Microsoft offers documentation to enable Direct Routing, it’s an intense, do-it-yourself approach that requires high levels of specialized expertise. Alianza’s turnkey, voice-enabled Teams integration goes beyond Direct Routing to radically simplify the heavy technical and administrative complexities of implementing Direct Routing. With Alianza for Microsoft Teams, CSPs are better positioned to deliver an enterprise-grade, feature-rich, and administratively easy solution to their end–users.

Alianza’s Business Cloud Communications PBX serves as the central calling platform and routing engine for Microsoft Teams users, offering consistent call routing policies and proper management of user presence, metrics, and call routing. Simply add the integration to an account through the Alianza Admin Portal and identify the Microsoft 365 Global Admin user who will manage the integration. CSP staff and the Global Admin will have a real-time status view of the state and health of the integration in the Alianza portal.

“We’ve eliminated all of the complexity required by service providers to deliver Teams telephony for their end-users. Alianza for Microsoft Teams is another example of how Alianza innovates to help CSPs grow their cloud communications portfolio and capitalize on large revenue opportunities and radically simplify voice and UC deployment at scale,” says Dag Peak, Chief Product Officer at Alianza. “This represents a massive market opportunity. Service providers can leverage Microsoft Teams’ popularity, market share, and extensive customer base by using Alianza for Microsoft Teams as the ideal, voice integration solution.”

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