22 01732 759725 UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS 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 just 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 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 Going places Paul Wakefield
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=