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AudioCodes solution: seamless unified communications environment

Taking the next step in unified communications with AudioCodes.

Johannesburg, 02 Dec 2020

With the move to modern collaboration systems, like Microsoft Teams, many companies are struggling to integrate their existing telephony needs with the services that link their people together. Many organisations were running parallel collaboration and telephony systems, with collaboration systems enabling video, chat and voice calls within the solution, and traditional voice systems still being used to make calls to mobile and fixed-line numbers.

This provided an acceptable solution when most of a company’s employees were office-based, but with the massive increase in remote workers as a result of COVID and the subsequent shift in working patterns, companies found themselves having to move quickly to enable traditional voice services from within their collaboration suite.

Daniel Modisapudi, Business Development Manager for Advanced Technologies at Axiz, explains that while Microsoft Teams offers full calling capabilities in some regions, this is not available in South Africa. “To roll out a full unified communications solution locally, you need to integrate services, like those available from AudioCodes. For our partners, the AudioCodes solution allows them to deliver a complete solution to their customers. Irrespective of whether customers want to fully embrace the Teams environment or still need to retain some of their analogue telephone infrastructures, AudioCodes can facilitate that.

“We’ve seen that when our partners take Microsoft Teams to their customers, there’s still a certain amount of hesitancy and confusion, especially around the future of Skype for Business. This provides a comprehensive answer to all those concerns,” he says. “With many people still working from home, it’s possible to route their calls to them wherever they are, rather than relying on them to be in the office or having them return calls via their cellphone.

“The customer doesn’t need to change their service provider because voice calling simply integrates into their existing offerings.”

With a solution that can operate equally well on-premises or in the cloud, the AudioCodes solution allows companies to pick the option that best aligns with their needs.

The benefits of the AudioCodes solution don’t stop at simply enabling a seamless unified communications environment. As with any IP-based solution, the need to monitor the quality of service is critical to ensuring an optimal user experience. Many of the benefits of Teams are lost if an organisation can’t deliver high-quality voice and video services users expect.

This may lead to them reverting to mobile phones or other communications services. “For IT teams, the visibility provided by AudioCodes is critical in understanding the user experience,” Modisapudi comments. “With these insights, it’s possible to identify the root cause of any loss in performance, be it on the device level, a slow local area network, or issues with the system as a whole. Visibility into this means that issues can be resolved before they impact the business.”

AudioCodes provides a full solution portfolio for Microsoft Teams Voice, including On-Premises Microsoft Teams Direct Routing enablement as well as cloud-based Teams Direct Routing as a Service (DRaaS), Microsoft Teams Certified IP Phones & Conference Room Solutions, Microsoft Teams Certified Call Recording, and AI-based Meeting Recorder with active BOT integration with Teams.

“For our partners, there is a massive opportunity to provide Microsoft Teams to companies of all sizes. With AudioCodes, many of the potential challenges are easily resolved,” he concludes.

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