SIPPIO Voice-Enables Microsoft Teams With Speed and Agility

Covid-19 changed how so many companies work. By enabling hundreds of millions of teleworkers, the immediate beneficiaries were companies like Zoom and products like Microsoft Teams. They allowed these workers to be more productive and stay connected.

The interesting disconnect was phone systems, which, in some cases are old and not IP-based, meaning workers didn’t have solid access to their office phones.

Teams isn’t really designed to be a PBX replacement so third parties have stepped in. One is SIPPIO, which offers a 100 percent Azure- and Teams-native service for voice-enabling Microsoft Teams that is sold exclusively through resellers/MSPs/SIs/channel partners, etc. Ingram Micro, AudioCodes, Paladin, eGroup, Datalinks, Aura Alliance are just a few of the many solutions providers that use the company’s solution.

Voice-enabling Microsoft Teams with SIPPIO direct routing as a service reduces the cost, complexity and time-to-market from building direct routing in-house. It makes Teams a more voice-friendly solution. Direct routing as a service makes it quick and easy for Channel Partners to help customers retire legacy PBX systems, third-party video meetings and chat platforms that have been rendered redundant.

Consolidating enterprise communications onto Teams also reduces the complexity of managing multiple systems, the drain on compute resources and the risk of non-compliance with regulations such as OSHA and HIPAA. SIPPIO automates tenant provisioning and user onboarding (as well as call control, routing and governance) so activating new revenue-producing clients takes approximately 10 minutes.

In an exclusive interview with the SIPPIO team, COO Dawn-Marie Elder, said, “Most direct routing solutions are using a whole lot of PowerShell code consisting of a lot of typing.

PowerShell looks like an old DOS command prompt command.” She continued, ”We automated this, working with Microsoft, and built an application that is in Teams and runs in Teams and is available to download and walk somebody through the activation of our solution in four or five steps.”

The company did not stop there, realizing different companies have different needs based upon their industries and how intense their voice communications needs are.

“We provide several different choices of calling plans around that are subscription options as we like to call them,” Elder added. “There’s an inclusive model where everything is in one SKU. This makes it simple and easy, like Netflix. We also have some different a-la-carte models that they can pick from, as well as the ability to bring their own carrier.”

Chief Evangelist Paul McMillan explained that you don’t need to deploy SBCs at every customer location as this is already built-in.

“We’re constantly updating and upgrading that infrastructure so you’re not paying for any of that, you’re basically getting it all at a built-in price,” he said.

From there, McMillan discussed the productivity increase SIPPIO provides.

“If you were to do a side-by-side comparison of what it would take to provision 20,000 users onto Teams using PowerShell commands, you would have somebody who’s highly certified doing that work, versus what we do,” he said. “It’s generally two or three screens that we would have to run through to configure a user versus as many as 20,000 lines of code. We can facilitate really building out all the capabilities and rounding out all the capabilities of Teams, very quickly, at scale without a lot of human intervention.”

Voice, coupled with popular features like conferencing, chat and video meetings, encourages user adoption. In addition, providing a single platform that employees can use on any device and from any location, also simplifies their day-to-day experience by streamlining workflows.

The company is in conversations with other players and we can expect more big “voice-enabling” news from SIPPIO soon. MSPs can make anywhere from 25-40% on a monthly charge of around $12 per month per user.

Elder and SIPPIO CEO Adam Cole are both speaking at ITEXPO 2021 in Miami, Florida, taking place June 22-25.  Elder will be speaking specifically on how to maximize Teams investments, while Cole will address the MSP Expo audience discussing tools that can increase MSPs’ profitability.