With the launch of International Operator Connect, Gamma is making it easier for wholesale partners in the UK to add voice to Teams deployments across Europe
Gamma has completed the first major deal for its International Operator Connect capability introduced in January to give UK channel partners selling Microsoft Teams Phone a simpler way to meet the needs of customers with an international footprint.
Set up in around three days, the 1,000-user solution for a business with sites across the UK and Ireland leverages a new tri-party model that Gamma has developed to enable partners to add voice to Microsoft Teams deployments across multiple countries without having to take on regulatory or operational complexity.
Teams Phone adds PSTN calling to Microsoft Teams either by connecting to the customer’s existing lines (Direct Routing) or through a pre-integrated, operator-managed service (Operator Connect). Gamma is one of four wholesale communications providers certified to offer Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams in the UK.
It also offers it internationally, enabling UK partners to sell into multiple markets through a single provider. International Operator Connect is already available in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Austria and Ireland. Subject to demand, it could be extended to a further 17 countries where Gamma is already a regulated operator.
Tri-party model
Paul Wakefield, Head of Commercial and Strategy Product Management at Gamma, says the model Gamma has devised for International Operator Connect, enabled by last year’s acquisition of Coolwave, is much simpler than existing options for UK wholesale partners that want to sell Microsoft Operator Connect services internationally.
These are either to go through the process of becoming a regulated telecommunications operator in multiple territories themselves, which is administratively quite onerous and can be expensive, or to sell Operator Connect on a dealer basis for a commission and abdicate responsibility for the contract, the pricing and the customer relationship.
With International Operator Connect, Gamma has introduced a tri-party model in which it takes responsibility for local regulation and compliance but the wholesale partner continues to own the customer relationship and the billing relationship. This makes it easier and risk-free for a wholesale partner to sell multinational services in any territory in which Gamma is regulated.
“Tri-party is fairly innovative in that we want to give the partner as much control as we can, while maintaining their non‑regulated status and not opening them up to risk. That’s the key thing. Fundamentally, I’m looking to mitigate that risk,” explains Wakefield.
He says that in the short time International Operator Connect has been available, Gamma has received interest from across the board, not just from larger partners.
“Not everyone is capable of landing a 10,000-user multinational deal that spreads across the globe, but you’d be surprised how many UK-headquartered businesses have a requirement for 10 users, 20 users, 50 users in an outreach centre that could be in mainland Europe. Ireland is the most popular destination, as you might imagine, predominantly because it shares a land border with Northern Ireland and there’s a lot of cross-border communications.”
Software model
Another thing Gamma has done with International Operator Connect, says Wakefield, is align it with the company’s all-inclusive offering, mitigating the need for partners to bill minutes.
“The reality is I want to sell this like software. Microsoft Teams is in effect a software package, but people treat voice as a separate add-on that’s aligned to minutes and rate cards and numbers. For me, that’s the wrong way to sell it. Absolutely, you want to sell voice, but justas an additive to the licence. If I can sell it aligned to the Teams licence, effectively as a voice licence, I’m not too concerned with the minutes, because what a partner is looking for is something that is simple to sell and answers the customer problem, which is ‘I want to make a telephone call. I need a number’. Do they really want to be worrying about whether they are domestic calling, mobile calling or international calling, what their rate card is, how much they are being charged and the possibility of bill shock? There are so many different problems with minutes, whereas a single per user per month price for telephony opens up the market for any reseller out there. My goal is to turn telephony into a software sale.”
This, Wakefield suggests, will be particularly welcome for IT resellers that might have little experience of telecoms.
“They don’t need to understand telecoms,” he says. “They can consume it from us. We bear the regulatory burden and we take away the barriers of sale. They know they’re dealing with a company with a global reputation for telephony provision. We are the largest SIP trunk provider in the UK and we are one of the biggest Microsoft Teams Operator Connect partners on the globe. You’re building on that capability, pedigree, heritage and the innovations we’re putting into market. We’ve got a very strong proposition.”
Growth opportunity
By making it easier for UK partners to sell into the European market, International Operator Connect is another attraction for partners looking to address the huge growth opportunity presented by Teams Phone. Citing figures from market research company Cavell, Wakefield says that in the next five years the number of Teams Phone users in Western Europe will increase to about 40 million.
“Microsoft itself has released figures showing there are 350 million Teams users globally and 26 million Teams Phone PSTN users. That is only a 6% attach rate, but you can’t imagine that 94% of Teams users do not use PSTN to ring people. It might be that minutes are declining, but they’ll still have the capability; all they’ll be doing is running a separate PBX and effectively paying twice. That in itself presents a huge opportunity, but allied to that is the fact that the world is moving away from on-premises kit and into the cloud and the likelihood is that Teams will become the dominant UCaaS platform, with Teams Phone as a logical extension to it. That is the opportunity we capitalise on.”
As that trend continues and the Teams Phone attach rate goes up, Operator Connect and International Operator Connect will become an ever more important part of Gamma’s portfolio. “We’re trying to cover all bases. We’re a UCaaS company, so we will absolutely sell UCaaS services and applications.
We’re a big Cisco Partner, we’re a big Ericsson LG partner with IPECS. But customers will obviously make a choice and if they choose to use Microsoft I need to position Gamma to take that opportunity. We will sell customers whatever is the right thing for them at the time. Having Teams Operator Connect as a complementary position to our wider UCaaS portfolio makes sure we cover the breadth of the market in terms of customer choice.”
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