The Institute Of Development Studies (IDS)

Research of different telephony solutions led to the identification of Microsoft’s Teams Phone System as a possible solution. The Microsoft call plan payments did not suit the IDC needs in particular as it didn’t make sense to have licenses for extensions that were infrequently used. A viable alternative was introduced in the form of Microsoft Direct Routing for Teams which allows a Communications Provider to replace the Microsoft calling plans with their own using approved Session Border Controller equipment and SIP trunks. In the IDC case the Direct Routing is provided using the Fuse 2 Microsoft certified cloud SBC solution. This not only provides inbound and outbound voice communications with Teams but allows the integration of third-party systems. With Fuse 2 this led to a phased approach that would allow IDC to be happy with progress at each stage before moving on to the next. The fact that the Fuse 2 infrastructure was virtual and hosted meant that the solution could be trialled with no upfront hardware costs.