Following the successful introduction of Microsoft Operator Connect to the EMEA market in recent months, CallTower announced this month that it is expanding its premium Unified Communications services to the Asian Pacific region this summer.
The announcement is part of a global expansion, bringing Microsoft’s most innovative voice service component for Microsoft 365 users to more users worldwide.
“We are thrilled to bring more of our global customers the opportunity to join us with Operator Connect,” says CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio. “CallTower has over 20 years of history providing direct routing services to our international markets, so this is an exciting moment for us to bring them the smoothest voice experience for Teams.”
Advantages of Operator Connect for Teams Admins
Demand for Microsoft Teams has grown exponentially over the past few years as more organizations have shifted over to cloud deployments and services.
In 2024, the number of daily active users grew to over 320 million.
While direct routing for voice had long been an option for adding the PSTN services that organizations depend on, the ease of implementation for Operator Connect has led to a massive growth in demand.
Operator Connect allows admins to manage provisioning, voice mail, conferencing, and much more for their users, all through the ease of their Microsoft 365 portal.
Along with Operator Connect's powerful core services, many customers take advantage of the premium-level additional features that a solutions provider like CallTower—one of the initial five vendors to offer Operator Connect in 2021—can offer them.
“CallTower is improving the outcome for the customer, helping them minimize the vendor management,” says Rubio to UC Today. “We're doing the analog, text messaging, call compliance, analytics, CCasS, emergency failover, and many other features that the customer would have to outsource and get multiple different vendors to manage and acquire. We're all doing it internally and that really is a big differentiator for a lot of customers.”
Supporting Customers and Partners in APAC and LATAM
Rubio tells UC Today that they will initially be rolling out Operator Connect into the Australian and New Zealand markets before continuing to launch it in additional locations, including:
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- Indonesia
- Philippines
- Thailand
- Taiwan
These locations should be operational by the end of Q2 24.
After that, they will expand into Latin America, starting with Brazil and Mexico before adding Argentina, Chile, Columbia, and Peru.
Tips for Choosing a Global Operator Connect Vendor
For organizations looking to make the move to Operator Connect, whether in these new international markets or even in the North American and EMEA markets where it is already established, choosing the right partner can be critical for success.
With all the possible criteria, here are a couple of points to consider:
