UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS as 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 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.” www.gamma.co.uk 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 Potential Unlimited PXC.co.uk NEXT LEVEL STARTS NOW Seize every opportunity with PXC. Get in touch. Now access the best Broadband products through our recently enhanced interface - 1Portal. Backed by our proven scale network and decades of expertise, growth doesn’t get easier than this.
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