Forum Discussion
Teams Direct Routing v/s Operator Connect
There are regulations in India due to which Microsoft has selected few carriers/operators to be part of the Operator Connect program. Currently, there is no way the carrier/operator in India can directly apply for the OC accelerator program.
We are working on Teams DR with a hosted SBC model (Hosted DRaaS). I think it would be similar to the OC solution except few points which you highlighted.
1) SLA on OC will be better compared to Teams DR (due to direct connectivity with MAPS)
2) Under OC, APIs are available form Microsoft for the carrier to connect to customer tenant, to read information and provision phone numbers into customer Teams Admin Center.
3) Customers get an easier management with OC since all phone numbers can be managed in Teams Admin Center, much easier than Direct Routing.
4) There is also an advantage for customers with multiple carriers, the admin interface (TAC) is the same for all carriers and the process of assigning phone numbers to users is the same.
Thank you
Hey vikramh24288
Looks like Microsoft just announced at Inspire last week what you were eluding to about a couple of other operators launching OC soon in India ( https://www.airtel.in/business/b2b/airtel-iq, https://www.tatacommunications.com/solutions/unified-communications/unified-communications-as-a-service/microsoft-teams-solutions/operator-connect/, and https://www.tatatelebusiness.com/cloud-and-saas/smartflo/ucaas/
As per your comparison between offering DRaaS vs Operator Connect, the company I work for ( https://goziro.com/uc-managed-services/microsoft-teams-voice-calling/?hsCtaTracking=5a5132f8-629a-444b-95b7-0004629491e3%7C67f0eff1-5c47-4eb9-83fb-21bd79a4ec2a went through a similar exercise in identifying the pros/cons of the types of PSTN connectivity (Calling Plans vs OC vs Direct Routing).
Although there's no connectivity with MAPS as you correctly mentioned, our team developed an extremely reliable calling solutions through DRaaS via hosted/managed geo-redundant SBCs.
As for the perceived advantage of managing your numbers/carriers from a single place (TAC) - We were able to build and provide our customers with a https://goziro.com/uc-provisioning-software/teams-provisioning/ with Role Based Access Control so that they can manage all their numbers and policies (across any carrier and any type of number including Direct Routing). This removes the need for having to go into TAC or needing Powershell.
Ultimately, we found that our customers may have much more to consider than just PSTN connectivity when moving their calling to teams and choosing their providers. How will the number porting experience be? What do they do with / how to migrate off an existing PBX with features that teams don't support? What will they lose/gain? What kind of support will they receive? What kind of contact center needs do they have? What about compliance recording? The list goes on...
There's often a lot more to the convo than just Direct Routing vs Operator Connect. By looking at our customer's calling needs more holistically, the conversation quickly moves away from "Where do you want to buy your numbers from" and more into "What kind of provider do you want to partner with".
- Hi Carl,
I would like to know if the Microsoft SBC used in the OC offer is mutualized or a single SBC instance is created for each customer. I get this question a lot from my clients,
Many thanks in advance,
Kind Regards
