Cloud Communications – Make the Right Choice

Martin Bacon, Consultants Team Leader and Unified Communications Expert at Chess, gives an overview of our cloud communication solutions and how to make the right choice. 

• Jump to What is right for you, Cloud Voice or Teams? >

There are a number of reasons why our customers are switching to Cloud Communications. Many are reacting early to the PSTN and ISDN switch off in 2025. Others are taking the opportunity to allow their people to work from anywhere and move all their communications, including telephony, to the cloud. Whatever the reason our customers are all asking the same question: “What system is right for us?”. 

There are a lot of variables when it comes to deciding on a platform:

• investment in the current solution
• new hardware required
• flexibility of location requirements
• ease of use and adoption for your people
• compliance requirements such as call recording
• statistics monitoring and dashboards
• contact centre requirements

What is right for you, Cloud Voice or Teams Voice?

We have two options for our customers to choose from Cloud Voice and Teams Voice. Here is a quick overview of each.

Teams Voice: Microsoft Teams is used in many organisations nowadays as a central communications hub integrating Office 365 with file sharing, messaging and video communications. If you use Teams already, it makes sense to link in your telephone communications to have one "Pane of Glass" for all your communications needs and adopt Teams Voice. We have three flavours to choose from Teams Voice, Teams Voice plus and Teams Voice Premium.

• Teams Voice allows you to link phone calls from the telephone network to your Teams platform and uses the native Telephony features built into Teams to serve calls up to your users.
• Teams Voice Plus allows you to add more "PBX" features compared to Teams Voice, including a wider range of handsets, Call recording, CTI integration and better reporting for your management. It still integrates into your Teams platform, and you can use your Teams client where required.
• Teams Voice Premium allows you to add contact centre functionality to Teams Voice Plus. 

Cloud Voice: If you don't use Teams now or don't intend to use Teams in the future, our Cloud Voice solution provides you with a standalone Unified Communications (UC) platform. Features such as chat and video calling are fully enabled in the Cloud Voice UC client - Collaborate.

Ultimately a solution needs to tick many boxes to prove a healthy return on investment. Transitioning to the cloud is simple when you have done it before but can be daunting if you haven't. Those of our customers who have already made the change have immediately noticed tangible benefits in the form of:

• consolidating their telephony licensing, maintenance and call costs (including their Microsoft licensing)
• removing the need for installing additional applications to facilitate calling
• providing a “single pane of glass” view for their people to bring speed to day to day tasks
• self-service management
• fraud protection
• disaster recovery
• delivering seamless integration for complete flexibility and mobility

"Teams has really enabled us to improve the service we give to our clients, while at the same time saving us money – truly a no-brainer!"

- Richard Spinks, IT and Systems Manager, OAC

If you are thinking of making the move but are confused by all the options available on the market, we are happy to help you. You can book a free consultation with our UC experts that can explain everything you need to know, demonstrate the solutions and show you the art of the possible.

Click here to book your free session, and we will be happy to enable you on your first steps to work Securely from Anywhere, Anytime within Microsoft Teams.