SEACOM, which positions itself as Africa’s leading digital infrastructure and managed services provider, has partnered with unified communications firm Q-KON South Africa to offer Microsoft Teams Calling to its enterprise customers and end-users.
One of the most impactful features in the age of digital collaboration and globally distributed workforces, Microsoft Teams Calling integrates traditional phone call functionalities into the Microsoft Teams platform, enabling organisations and their employees to communicate and collaborate seamlessly.
The solution forms part of SEACOM’s greater cloud and communications portfolio and is available to all its enterprise customers, including those already utilising the Microsoft Teams platform.
“Microsoft Teams Calling embodies the transformative impact of business technology, taking a legacy function and evolving it to meet the needs of the modern enterprise. In partnership with Q-KON South Africa, SEACOM is proud to offer a solution that not only provides an essential function to businesses of all shapes and sizes, but one that has the power to improve workforce collaboration, enhance productivity and propel innovation across sectors and industries,” said Santosh Naraidoo, Senior Product Manager at SEACOM.
As a cloud-based phone calling solution, Microsoft Teams Calling lets users make and receive voice calls from the Teams application, eliminating the need for traditional phone and landline systems. In addition to supporting internal calls between employees and team members, the solution supports external calls to landlines and mobile phones.
“Teams Calling enables organisations to streamline their communication processes while reducing costs. Research by Forrester has shown businesses that adopt unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and switch to cloud-based telephony can drastically reduce their total communications costs. As a result, businesses should look to providers that unify their communications, simplify procurement and management, and overall, make communications more intelligent and consequential to business continuity and operations,” Naraidoo said.
In addition to accessing voice, video and chat functions on one platform, Microsoft Teams Calling offers a full suite of advanced features. These include call forwarding, voicemail and auto-attendants, as well as call analytics and reporting that provide users with valuable insights for data-driven decision-making.
Microsoft Teams Calling integrates and works seamlessly with other Microsoft 365 applications. For example, users can schedule calls through Outlook and access shared files in OneDrive. Teams Calling is also easily scalable and can accommodate an increasing number of users as the organisation grows.
“The biggest value offering of Microsoft Teams Calling is how it lets businesses move from a traditional telecommunications strategy to a more integrated and technology-driven one. It fundamentally transforms how businesses communicate internally and shows how digital platforms can have a significant impact on business growth and success, both in the short and long term,” said Tim Pryce, Business Development Executive at Q-KON South Africa.
Established in 2005 as a local subsidiary of satellite technology specialist firm, Q-KON, Q-KON South Africa offers end-to-end unified communications solutions by importing, distributing and supporting hardware and platforms from industry leaders. As part of its existing product offering, Q-KON South Africa offers various products and services for voice deployments in the Microsoft Teams environments, including session border controllers (SBCs), TDM gateways, headsets, IP phones, and billing, monitoring and troubleshooting applications.
“The marriage of SEACOM’s resilient connectivity infrastructure and portfolio of digital services, and Q-KON South Africa’s historical expertise in telecommunications, bodes well for local consumers, businesses and the greater ICT landscape. As industry partners, we are in a position to accelerate business growth and digitalisation by offering services and solutions that not only meet enterprises’ specific needs, but respond to trends that forecast how they will operate in the future,” Pryce added.
For more information about Microsoft Teams Calling and how SEACOM can support your business with unified communication and collaboration solutions, contact the company at info@seacom.com to speak with a sales representative.