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Transforming Unified Communications: CallTower's Operator Connect Leadership, Microsoft Teams Integration, and Future of Voice Solutions

• Evan Kirstel

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Ever wondered how cloud communications can transform your business? Get ready to master the landscape of unified communications with insights from William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at CallTower. This episode promises to enrich your knowledge on the evolution of Microsoft's voice solutions, the power of Operator Connect, and the distinct advantages it offers over direct routing. Discover how CallTower excels in a competitive market with a unique focus on dedicated support teams and streamlined setup processes.

Join us as we uncover the seamless integration of CallTower’s services within the Operator Connect ecosystem. Learn how they handle everything from provisioning and porting telephone numbers to integrating with CRM tools like Salesforce and Dynamics. You'll hear about their comprehensive support system, including 24/7 network operations, and the importance of regulatory compliance in global services. We also explore the future of voice communication, the significance of Microsoft Teams in enhancing global connectivity, and how Call Tower is setting the standard for robust security and compliance measures.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, diving into the world of cloud communications and Microsoft Teams today with a true innovator in this space, a legend in cloud communications, william Rubio at Calltower. William, how are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing pretty good, Evan. Thank you. I don't know about a legend, but I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Well in our circles.

Speaker 1:

You're a legend, but maybe introduce yourself. And for those who may not be familiar with Call Tower, the mission of the team yeah sure, I would love to so.

Speaker 2:

William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at Call Tower.

Speaker 2:

Call Tower is definitely an innovative organization that really focuses on communications, both in unified communications and contact center, as a service for customers on a global level.

Speaker 2:

We really focused on best of breed solutions such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco, WebEx, Zoom Phone and some contact center solutions such as Five9 and Solgary and Cisco and so forth that we do work with. But for us it's really about driving the right solution that makes sense for the customer and giving the customer choices, and we integrate all those through our own proprietary software called Call Tower Connect, which really is kind of where the magic happens behind the scenes to make sure that customers have those options and they can integrate those different types of solutions and then really integrate a lot of other ancillary products to really drive a full turnkey solution for them. So we're pretty excited about where we've grown over the last 15 years or so. It's been really a fun ride. We continue to expand and really help our customers pretty much on a global level, focusing a little bit more, I'd say, on the North America, EMEA and Asia pack areas, but we're starting to make some movement in LATAM as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's a fantastic opportunity, very exciting, and for today's session we're going to dive deep into Microsoft Teams and something called Operator Connect. You know, everyone knows, microsoft Teams has taken the lion's share of market around communications and collaborations and you know, maybe talk about your position in that marketplace, your partnership with Microsoft and you. And what is Operator Connect? What's the big idea?

Speaker 2:

I think when you look at Microsoft and people tend to kind of forget this a little bit. I mean, first and foremost, they're a software company, right? And what they really like to do is create and develop software that they can enable partners and resellers, such as Calltower, to really bring a full end-to-end solution to their customers, right, because they're also Microsoft customers at the end of the day. And Microsoft has been doing voice going back to 2008. So I know we're in 2024 right now, so going back about 16 years back in the days of what they called the office communicator, which started out with your basic instant messaging and presence, integrating it to different types of telephony platforms that were out there overall. And then they came out with Link 2010. Then they came out with Link 2013. Then they came out with Skype for Business 2015. That was really where the voice started to really kind of pick up some traction. And then they came out with this thing called Teams in 2017, which was really a big collaboration platform that could actually do voice, and the whole goal was for them to actually enable the voice component that it could compete against the other traditional telephony platforms that are out there and really make it a full end-to-end collaboration platform, and I think they've done that right.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think, if you go back to that timeframe, overall, with the likes of Slack and some of the other ones that were out there, I think Microsoft really took the bull by the horns and really started to be innovative and moving into the cloud and also making sure that they could provide a full solution to their customer and then enabling partners like us to really drive the voice solution from end to end. So it started back then right around the 2017 timeframe with direct routing. We were one of the first providers to actually enable direct routing. We were in the beta testing, you know, with Microsoft going back and helping with different things like auto attendance and call queues, as as I called which old timers right, old timers like me call it hunk groups, if you remember the term back in the day and we did that.

Speaker 2:

And then over the last few years, there's been kind of an evolution of direct routing is probably the best way that we launched in September of 2021. We were one of the hand handpicked five actually providers to actually enable what is called Operator Connect, which is again that new evolution, right, or just kind of that next phase of voice within the Microsoft Teams arena overall. So that's really kind of where a little bit more or a lot more of the focus has been over the last several years. It's become a little bit of a crowded space. We were one of the first five three years later almost to the day that we're sitting here in September, and it was September of 2021. Now there's over 90 operators that are in that ecosystem, but they all do things a little bit different and we tend to think that we differentiate ourselves by the value and the products and the solutions that we can bring to our customers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great point. And for those who may not be familiar, what's the main difference between an Operator Connect and other options, as you said, like direct routing, for adding phone service to Teams, and why would someone choose Operator Connect over other kinds of approaches?

Speaker 2:

Well, it gives what Operator Connect does that direct routing doesn't do. There's a host of things, but some of the highlights, I think first and foremost, is when you're working with Microsoft or working with a partner like Call Tower, the setup from a support standpoint is completely different, Meaning that we have a specific type of support team within Microsoft that is focused on Operator Connect team within Microsoft that is focused on Operator Connect, while in direct routing, if you happen to call in or need some support, you're going to be dealing with the same support team that is trying to fix your Microsoft Word or your Microsoft Excel because there's no capability there, so I mean that's a big difference as far as real-time to provide some resolution and you know any issues that might come up, and that's just one thing.

Speaker 2:

I think the the major things overall is it gives a lot more control to the administrator of each one of the organizations that are looking at enabling voice, because everything lives within your office 365 environment, and it also gives visibility to a partner like call tower that we could help you see, in case of enabling any call queues, auto attendance, troubleshooting a lot easier, even setting up your emergency services, whether you're in the United States or in other parts of the world that do provide some similar services to E911 that we're able to provide.

Speaker 2:

I think when you look at that and then you look at the management, that everything does live within the Office 365. It's just a better solution overall. With direct routing you kind of lose a little bit of the visibility from an administrative standpoint as far as how your designs are set up, how your call flows are set up and so forth, and it really just kind of drives that next iteration and gives you more control overall. And then you could also set up the different rules and guidelines that you have for your different groups, your different business units, your different departments, all the way down to the employee level. So you could do it based in a group or you could also do it on an employee level. So I think that those are some of the major highlights. From a pricing standpoint, it's pretty much the same. There's really no difference there overall. But we're pretty excited about where Operator Connect is going and the concentration and the movement that we've been seeing with customers over the last few years.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. So we love our friends at Microsoft, but sometimes not all of the easiest solutions to set up and configure and manage. So how do you think about making it easier for companies to manage Operator Connect within Teams?

Speaker 2:

You know, I think, evan, when you first you know and that's a great question Microsoft does not like to work directly with customers. In a lot of cases, especially the mid-market and SMB right. I mean I think last that's what I mentioned, I think it was somewhere on 93% of the revenue that comes into Microsoft comes from partners like Call Tower. Right, I mean, that's really where the big revenue comes and obviously they have their enterprise customers that they work with and they work well with partners to go ahead and enable their customers to go ahead and drive the Microsoft ecosystem. But I think overall, when you look at the way that they're set up and the way that Calltower is set up to really make it easier for companies to actually go ahead and work within Microsoft, call Tower really brings that value. Right, we do different things like provisioning and porting of the telephone numbers. We go ahead and we make sure that we set up all those different designs we project, manage your porting right, which is kind of a necessary evil that a lot of organizations don't want to just upload numbers and just wait to see if your port's been rejected or accepted, or different items like that right. You want to make sure that you have somebody that can kind of hold your hand. And then I think the other part of it is what are all the additional services and products that a company like Halltower is able to provide within the Operator Connect ecosystem? We do not look at it as a transactional type of solution, right, it's not just plugging in to a user, giving that user a DID so that they can make and receive phone calls to the public switch telephone network. If that's what you think it is, then it's completely wrong. Right, because it is a complete collaboration tool. But then different things like CRM integrations with Salesforce or Dynamics, right, or any of the other major ones that are out there ServiceNow, et cetera. The fact that you can do call compliance or call recording compliance overall, the analytics that kind of go behind it. Right, when you're looking at what are my collaboration tools that my users are actually using, what are the voice analytics that I have on the back end users are actually using? What are the voice analytics that I have on the backend?

Speaker 2:

The contact center side right, everybody nowadays, contact center is a big area that continues to grow overall for a lot of organizations that before didn't have it and just to continue to make sure that they're competitive in their environment.

Speaker 2:

They're adding contact center support into their organizations and then simple things like analog lines. I mean it's one of those things that, whether it's overhead paging or door buzzers or security gates or intercoms, which we all need right Depending on the industry that you're in those are kind of necessary evils in a lot of cases. Those are things that Microsoft is not going to do. They're going to point you in a direction, to a website or to certain providers, and what we're trying to do to make it easier for the customer is we're trying to make sure that we can provide that full end-to-end solution and integrate those best-of-breed solutions, because we battle, test them and then we work with the ones that are easy to use and that can provide the most feature functionality to a customer and also understanding from a competitive standpoint that the pricing is a good price overall for the customer and really just drive that integration within the Operator Connect platform.

Speaker 1:

A fantastic approach. And speaking of making it easier for the customer, what does the process look like when a company decides to switch to Operator Connect with Call Tower? You know like what happens day zero, day one and beyond.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, we have a couple of different ways that we enable our customers Some of our customers do work with our partners, so we have what is called an indirect channel, and these are consultants that are out there that we work very well with them on a global level. We also, in some cases, do have some customers that come directly to us and through our website and we work with those as well and we sign them up onto a service order and then at that point it's handed over to a project manager that goes ahead and just basically manages the entire project from beginning to end and then winds up handing it off to our support team once the customer is active and live. And then we do have also what we call our client success team, which manages our customers, and then those are the ones that are holding their hand basically on a day-to-day basis, in case they have any changes to the account that they want to make. They want to disable some users, add some users pretty much what we call the MACDs that they want to do. And then we also have our 24 by 7 network operations center in case customers do have any interruptions of service. They don't know what's going on with the service. We want to make sure that we can answer them and we can work with them overall.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that we're doing which I'm very excited to go ahead and announce is we have also what we call our GTX product, which is basically a product for a lot of managed service providers that are out there which are looking at trying to enable the voice for our customers, but they just don't have the relationship on the voice side with Microsoft.

Speaker 2:

And through the partnership with Microsoft and through our development team, we're able to actually provide this automation tool that's called GTX, that MSPs can partner with Call Tower and what they could do is they could actually enable the voice component within Teams and they can basically work with their customer directly and Call Tower is behind the scenes. We call it our Rebuilder Program. That's the actual name of the program and the great thing about it is that MSPs are able to go ahead and continue to invoice their customers, even for the services that are on call tower, on the voice service, which always kind of a big hindrance from taxes and so forth, and we kind of figured out how to go ahead and work with that overall. But there's really different ways that customers can enable their services with us.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. So security is still top of mind for every company, from the boardroom down. How do you think about Operator Connect security and as well as compliance and related topics?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think when you're looking at security, everything within the voice component of Operator Connect lives within your Microsoft Office 365 environment, which, again, it's great because, going back to even direct routing, it enables users to provide different things, like MFA right, making sure that you have MFA enacted within your Office 365 environment.

Speaker 2:

You got the encryption on the voice side that makes sure that it's end-to-end encryption and nothing leaves your tenant within your Office 365 platform or your tenant within Azure, which is great. It's not going out and pulling in data from call tower and so forth. It kind of is that Microsoft's in the middle. Your tenant is on one side, we're on the other side and we're enabling that voice part of it to make sure that it connects. So that is about as secure as you're going to be able to get. And that's a big thing for companies now, especially when they're making phone calls on a global level. They have users that are working remote, so they're plugging in from a coffee shop or from their home use office. So you want to make sure that you have the right protocols in the platform and Call Tower does that and works with our customers for it.

Speaker 1:

A fantastic approach. So we've seen hybrid work continue to gain momentum. Doesn't look like we're all heading back to the office full time anytime soon. I assume that hybrid work is driving your pretty rapid growth. What else do you think is driving the adoption for Call Tower? You're pretty successful.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a couple of different things. I think that voice has become another application for us to communicate right. It still might be the main one overall. I know that that sounds kind of basic, but we use email, we use text messaging, we use other media platforms like WhatsApp. We use voice right. So I mean we use all these different ways that we communicate back and forth, whether it be with family, friends or co-workers, vendors, customers, etc. Whether it be with family, friends or coworkers, vendors, customers, et cetera.

Speaker 2:

And voice is another another means to communicate. And I think that what Microsoft has been able to do with Teams is really enable, or at least give the tools for partners like Call Tower to really enable, the voice component within Microsoft. Teams and the IT organizations are managing it and, let's face it, I mean we know this. I mean I'm working right now from my home myself, but whether I'm on a plane, whether I'm in a hotel room, whether I'm in a conference room, working from home, working from one of our offices here in the UK, et cetera, I just have to have an internet connection or even just a hotspot to my phone and I'm up and working.

Speaker 1:

I have access pretty much to all the tools that I need, which is good or bad right no-transcript strides in so many areas, including mobility and supporting 5G capabilities and working from anywhere, and speaking of that I mean they have a huge roadmap for Teams. It's tough to keep track of all the features and functionality, as do you. What future updates or improvements, enhancements, do you focus on these days? Looking forward?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, first thing that we just did was, I think about three weeks ago, we went ahead and we enabled our Microsoft Teams mobile solution overall. So that's on a global level. So it's really great that users can basically, with their SIM card, enable their DID within their mobile device so that they don't have to worry about opening up their Microsoft Teams app. Everything could be going into a centralized telephone number for that end user. So if that employee happens to leave, everything stays with the actual organization. Overall, yeah, it's huge. And the same thing when you're traveling right, whether you're traveling overseas or domestic, or you want to make a phone call back to a customer or a vendor, you know you're on your mobile phone. Do you want to click on the app and go ahead and go through the app, or do you just want to go ahead and pick up the phone and just make that call and it's going to show up as your Office DID? So different strokes for different folks, right. It just kind of depends what winds up being a good solution there for you, but that's something that we're pretty happy about. Overall. We're looking at doing some integrations with some of the other communication platforms, like a WhatsApp. We had launched our SMS and MMS solution within Microsoft Teams a few years ago and that's gotten some really good traction over the past few years. So you could imagine that I'm a mobile user and I'm text messaging from my phone into your Teams DID and you can respond back on instant messaging and it's going to show up on my mobile device. So I think that those different things are good.

Speaker 2:

And then really just that global connectivity. We're currently right now in roughly about 35 or so countries. We enabled North America, we enabled EMEA, we enabled AsiaPAC, we're about to get ready to launch over in LATAM and really trying to make sure that we work with our customers and give them that global coverage. And you've probably seen this, evan, and you've probably heard it from other folks coming on, you know and talking with you on this, but regulations or regulatory constraints per country, whether you're in the EU or other parts of the world, have really gotten somewhat strict overall and really trying to find an organization like Call Tower that could really help a customer that has an office in Hong Kong, in Rio, in New York and over in Paris and be able to go ahead and provide and drive that same solution for that customer on that global level. There's very few of us that could actually do that and make sure that the customers are going to see and experience the same type of feature sets that they're looking for.

Speaker 1:

Oh, fantastic update, Really impressive. What about you personally? It's a busy travel event season. What are you looking forward to this month, next and run up to the end of the year?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's this. You know the summers always tend to be a little bit easier on us overall, but yeah, I think for the next five or six weeks there's nonstop travel. We're obviously a big focus on EMEA. We have our team over there as well, so we'll be doing some traveling over to the UK and other parts of Europe as well, and then pretty much all over the country, and then we kind of have a little break here in the US with the Thanksgiving holiday and then right after that we get into the holiday season with the holiday parties and you know, half of this year is already over. I can't believe that 2024, you know we're almost in the fall, right, we're almost in Q4 overall. So it's pretty exciting where we're going. But you know, our thing is making sure that we're partnering with the right organizations, that we're delivering the right solutions to our customers and I think our customers it's resonating with them because of how we're listening to them and really try to drive the right adoption for them.

Speaker 1:

Overall, Well, congratulations on all the success, onwards and upwards, and look forward to keeping in touch. Thanks so much, william, for joining.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no problem, I appreciate it. Thanks, evan, as always for everything, and I look forward to catching up with you sometime in person over the next month.

Speaker 1:

Likewise and thanks everyone for listening and watching. And be sure to follow Call Tower on all their various social channels. They put out some really great educational content. Take care everyone.