>> Hi everyone,
welcome to another episode of Teams on Air.
Today we're going to be talking about a new technology
that's coming to Microsoft Teams called Direct Routing.
If you're existing Skype for Business customer,
you will be familiar with the Cloud Connector Edition.
And now, Direct Routing is
the new solution for Microsoft Teams.
Today, I brought to you Nikolay.
Nikolay, thanks for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Nikolay is a colleague of mine who
works in telephony space here at Microsoft.
Tell us a little bit about
how long you've been here at the company and what you do.
>> I'm a product manager in
Skype for Business and Teams backend,
and my role is to create new products.
I've been with Microsoft since 2009.
>> And so, tell me a little bit about the changes
in telephony that have been happening in
the industry over the last 10 years.
>> There are two trends have
been happening in the last 10 years.
One is telephony transforms from
the old ISDN trunks to the SIP based telephony.
And the second trend that's going on is that
telephony clients becomes a part of a software clients.
Microsoft actually pioneered this way
with the Office Communications Server,
merging the telephony and software,
let's say for conferencing,
for instant managing in one,
what we have been calling unified communications.
>> Yes, you've made a really great point here,
is that we really pioneered
this concept called unified communications,
where we brought together
these internet-based communications.
Like you said, this trend of bringing telephony
into a single client and
bringing in experiences like meetings,
chatting and instant messaging and
presence into this unified client.
Now that we have Microsoft Teams
and we recognize these trends,
what are some of the things that we can expect to
see with telephony and Microsoft Teams?
>> Telephony actually follows
the same trends as other technologies.
There is a big gap
for us going on to implement elements of
artificial intelligence in the telephony
and that's why we
started calling our next generation of
telephony as intelligence communications.
We want to become more
smart using elements of artificial intelligence.
>> That's great. And so,
you'll start to see in the experience,
not only the traditional telephony calls where
a user can make a call out to the PSTN network,
but now that they can actually have
more contextualized experiences brought on top of that.
So, that's really cool. Now, talk to me a little bit more
about Microsoft's phone system
as well as Direct Routing. What is it?
>> Sure. So, Microsoft provides,
I would say number one,
client for group collaboration
and teamworks which are called Microsoft Teams.
But now, teamwork is
possible without access to telephony networks.
One more element which Microsoft
provides within Office 365 is called phone
system which let customers and customers to receive,
make calls, provides
such functionality as an organizational
although then on cold cues boss admin scenarios.
And customers love this system for two reasons.
One, is unified communications, what we just said,
it helps to eliminate
need for the users of two separate clients.
One for, let's say, instant messaging,
conferencing and the second is
separate like what was form on
the desk for the making
and receiving the telephony calls.
So, the customers can just get
all these elements in
one client unified communication. That's one thing.
And the second, it actually helps
customers to save on the cost off on premises hardware,
PBXs and third party legacy devices.
The phone system itself can be
interconnected to that level unit working in two ways.
Number one is Microsoft Calling Plans.
Microsoft Calling Plans, means that
Microsoft will take care of
all your telephony needs
including getting you a new number,
phone number, or porting you the existing number.
Microsoft we provide all communication from the cloud.
The other option is bring
your own telco provider to the Teams.
And this is what we call Direct Routing.
>> So, if they have existing investments
and sub trunk providers,
or just legacy investments
that they're not really ready to get
rid of but want to incorporate
into the Office 365 experience, they can do that.
>> Right. There are actually
two reasons why customers demand actually Direct Routing.
The first is connect or bring your
own telco connect to your own separate provider.
And there are two main,
I would say, cases for this.
One is Microsoft Calling Plans are not
available in this country. There is no other choice.
>> So, that's a great point.
So, we have calling plans available in
several countries across the United States and Europe.
And some in Puerto Rico as well.
But it's obviously not
available and those could be for several reasons.
Either we're not ready to deploy that,
we're still working through legal requirements,
or for a local reason,
it might not be available there.
>> Right. And the second case,
is actually a customer to
want to bring their existing Telco contract.
So, they have a contract for several years.
In the middle of the contract,
they are not ready to break it and
therefore they want to bring their Telco to the Teams.
>> Yes.
>> By migrating to Teams to new communications platforms.
And the second reason
which is more applicable for bigger enterprises,
is mix and match different systems.
So, imagine the case where
you have a call center with some advanced functionality,
let's say whispering, or a skills-based routing.
And Microsoft doesn't provide the analog of this systems.
And there are, let's say,
five agents in this call center.
But the rest of the users, they can move to Teams,
take advantage of new intelligence communications and
save the cost of PBX or third-party legacy PBX.
In this case, enterprise is what they do.
They actually move the users who can be moved to
the Cloud and leave those five agents on
their existing call center and provide
the interoperability between the users in
the cloud and users who are still on the legacy system.
>> That's great. So, they could have a mixed environment.
>> Exactly.
>> They could have some users on calling
plans and some users who are
dependent on some other business process dependency,
on some third party tools.
>> Yeah, and it's actually what I call mix and match.
There is one more very important cases,
interconnect different analog devices.
We are talking about elevator phones.
We are talking about door openers.
We are talking about fax machines.
So, it's going to be
interconnected to the Direct Routing.
And just to summarize,
Direct Routing allows customers to bring
their telco for two main cases which are discussed.
It's where Microsoft Calling Plans are not
available for existing contracts where contracts exist.
And the second actually,
mix and match different system,
which may be analog devices to be accessed.
>> Perfect. All right, well,
tell me a little bit
about the nuances of the requirement.
So, what does that look like and how
do you actually plan for that?
>> Sure. There are two elements.
Microsoft provides the phone system itself plus Microsoft
provides the teams client which
can be used for making or receiving the calls.
Customer provides
the supported Session Border Controller.
And access to the Session Border Controller from the
Cloud.The Session Border Controller
is a device which can interconnect with this.
Other equipment like PBX and SIP
trunks allow to open your adapters.
And customers also provides that telephony trunks.
Once those elements are in place,
the configuration currently is in
proportional and takes about less than an hour
>> Less than an hour.
So, with the Session Border Controller and
just a couple of backend power shell script,
you can have a fully connected phone system
to your SIP trunk provider.
Wow that's pretty amazing that you can do that.
So, the old telephony closets,
there were people would have their routers
and switches and hubs all existing.
That can be really minimized to
justices and border controls.
>> Exactly.
>> Good. And so talk to me about
the requirements for configuring
a customer who is new to Microsoft,
and who's never used Skype for Business.
>> So, if a customer number use Skype for Business
then It's the Session Border Control
in itself is required, take surely.
Access to it from internet and SIP trunk,
then configuring pairing, was routing for
the users and it's
up and running as I said it's in an hour.
>> It's in an hour. Like if they're starting up
a new office and they want to have
the users who are going to be in that office,
they can easily set that up and
configure the entire building for that.
>> Also, prequests in place. Yes.
>> Yeah. And I know it's more
complicated for customers who are
Skype for Business on-prem customers who are
using either Cloud Connector edition or who
are thinking about just connecting
up to the phone system.
Talk to me a little bit about those nuances.
>> Sure. There are two cases.
The case number one is customer is
existing Skype for Business online customer with again,
Session Border Controller connected to it.
And as you mentioned,
to connect Session Border Controller
to Skype for Business users,
we had a special on-premises edition called
either connector or all customers
might leverage the full on-premises pool.
This picture shows the Session Border Controller
interconnected to the Skype for Business,
they can via Cloud Connector or on-premises pool.
The phone system is shared between Skype
for Business and Teams.
If the session border control is supported,
the first step would be just pair
this same session border controller
in parallel to Teams back-end.
So the one leg goes to the Skype for Business
back-end where our Cloud Connector On-Premises pool,
and the other leg goes to the Teams back-end.
Then the next step would be to configure voice routing on
session border controller and in Teams
back-end and start migrating users.
Once all users migrated, the old infrastructure,
which is Cloud Connector On-Premises Pool used to
interconnect to the Skype for
Business Online back-end, can be decommissioned.
That means that customers can
preserve the existing investments in
session border controllers and save on transition,
save during the transition to us.
If you are talking about pure On-Premises customers who
have Skype for Business or Lync On-Premises pool.
>> And they have a portal online, yes. Okay.
>> With the users homed on it,
the migration algorithm is almost the same.
So the session border controller can be
interconnected at the other leg to the Teams back-end,
migrate the users, and Microsoft provides a tool how
to migrate the users to the Teams, migrate the users.
And once all users were migrated,
the Skype for Business or Lync pool
can be decommissioned.
>> Right. So in either cases,
you can set up the environment in parallel
and slowly migrate the users to this.
>> Migrate, try.
So you might not say,
that's okay I don't want to go to Teams now.
>> Yes.
>> Just to try, you can set it up.
>> That's a great point.
So you can have proof of concepts and
pilots in your organization with a subset
of users that can slowly get
migrated to the Cloud and
just test it out to see how you like.
And you make a good point here,
you can leverage your existing investments, right?
>> We're trying to save
the cost when customers get into the Cloud and to Teams.
>> Right. Great point. So they can move on
their own pace as they see fit.
I'd love to take a quick break.
We'd love to show you some of the new things that are
happening in Microsoft Teams. Take a look.
>> Hi, I'm Anne Michaels.
Welcome to Teams Tips.
In this segment, I will give you
some quick and easy tips how you
can better use Microsoft Teams.
So when you have a chat conversation in Teams,
it often happens that you just
start that conversation with
one or two people but you get to
a point where you need to add somebody else,
and you don't want to copy all of
the content and start from scratch.
So to help you with that,
you can now go ahead and share a chat in Teams easily.
All you have to do is click on the little plus icon
at the right corner here at
the top and then you have three options.
You can either start from scratch
and not share any chat history,
but you can then keep
the same people in that conversation.
Or, you can choose to share all chat history.
The third option is that you can be very specific and
decide exactly how many days
of chat history you want to share.
And then simply type the name, in our example here,
I will add Karl to our conversation and that's it.
For more Teams tip, follow us on Twitter #TeamsTips.
>> Welcome back.
We're going to continue our session with Nikolay
on direct routing in Microsoft teams.
So Nikolay, you mentioned a couple of
times on supported session border controls.
What exactly does supported mean?
>> So we have two partners
who we are working with currently.
Those are AudioCodes and Ribbon.
We perform inter-operability testing, for example,
joint development, those companies
have joined support or seamless support process,
meaning the customer can call to
Microsoft or can call to AudioCodes or
Ribbon and they don't need to contact,
let's say if this is an issue on
Ribbon or AudioCodes side and they call to Microsoft,
they don't need to call Ribbon
separately or AudioCodes separately.
So Microsoft will work with Ribbon or
AudioCodes in back-end and we will
provide the seamless support experience for you.
We are working with
all models of AudioCodes and Ribbon which
are we can interact with all models of
AudioCodes and Ribbon which are currently on market.
>> Great.
So if a customer is using the Cloud Connector edition,
and the SBCs from AudioCodes or Ribbon.
>> Or Appliance. There is one more option,
there is Appliance provided
by AudioCodes and Ribbon which contains
in one device both Cloud Connector
and Session Border Control.
>> Oh great. So will
those appliances continue to work with Microsoft Teams?
>> Yes.
>> So they don't have to throw away
that investment again,
that's a really great point. All right.
So we've talked about
the end-to-end experience that customers can
bring in their SIP trunks into Microsoft Teams.
Now what I'd really like to transition to and
talk to is when can we see this available?
How can customers start trying out direct routing?
>> So we have a technical option preview program going on
and on public crowd [inaudible] this feature is delivery for June.
A little bit later,
we will be announcing the public preview
or we'll publish documentation.
It will be noted that [inaudible] quality,
but the preview, we will let almost everyone to try it.
>> Awesome.
So did you hear that guys?
Hopefully, by the end of June,
you'll be able to
try and leverage this feature and make sure you stay
connected to us to the Microsoft
tech communities where we'll be
announcing when you can
sign up and join the public preview program.
All right? Cool. All right.
So we have a couple of questions that
have come in and I'd love
to dive into them because I
think they're relevant to our entire audience.
The first thing is,
do you plan to expand the partners that
you have for session border controls?
>> Yes, we are working with several other vendors.
And we plan to have
at least four more vendors
coming by the end of this calendar year.
>> Awesome. So this
just expands our portfolio of partners
that customers can continue to work with
and leverage their infrastructure with.
So that's great. Is there
any additional cost for implementing direct routing?
>> No. We actually are using
the same model which we
use when you transition
from Skype for Business Online to Teams.
So you don't have to buy any new license.
So if you're existing E5 customer or you have E3,
that's Cloud PBX license,
you don't have to buy anything.
>> Okay.
>> It's the same price,
no additional charge for direct routing.
>> Awesome.
And Nikolay just mentioned Cloud PBX
which was our former name for phone system.
So yes, definitely, we want to make sure that
customer know that if you have a Cloud PBX license,
that is the same license for
phone system because it's the same technology.
All right. And also you made a good point is there's
no investment cost that you have to worry about.
So your existing SIP trunk investment,
you continue to leverage
those and your investment in Microsoft
365 and we've done
all the hard work to make sure that it works together.
And the last question that
I have that I really want to make sure
that we address before we close is certified SIP trunks.
So do we have a list of certified SIP trunk providers?
>> This is a very good question.
We certify the session border controller
which can interconnect to
usually any SIP trunk provider worldwide.
So there is no certified SIP trunks but
by certifying the session border controller,
we can provide connectivity to literally anyone.
>> Awesome.
So, as long as you have
our certified session border controller
with our many partners,
and hopefully we'll announce more
later on this year, you should be fine.
All right, great. Well, thank you
Nikolay for joining us and helping us
introduce direct routing to
Microsoft Teams and I hope you guys out there
will definitely sign up for
the preview program once
we announce that later on this year.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Will you come back? All right.
Well, thanks for joining another episode of Teams On Air.
We'll see you in two weeks.
