Next generation enterprise telecoms: cloud-based, UC-integrated, and now multinational

As enterprises increasingly manage their unified communications (UC) platforms on a global basis, why are they still procuring and managing telecommunications services on a country-specific or regional basis? Wouldn’t it make sense that there would be one single global management of all communications – a truly ‘unified’ approach – rather than the outdated inconsistent and disparate management of telecoms? 

The reason lies in the legacy – and even current – business models and strategic choices of traditional telecom providers. And the solution? A new generation of multinational cloud telephony providers offering a streamlined, global alternative. 

Telecoms: the post pandemic shift 

The modern telecommunications industry has been restructuring at pace since the pandemic, as it reinvents itself to serve the demands of remote and hybrid staff and teams in the modern workplace. The big telcos may well have led the first restructuring dimension, but they have more reluctantly joined the bandwagon of the second, and their broader business model simply isn’t suited to the third.

From on the ground to in the cloud 

To be fair, the big telcos were at the forefront of the industry’s first restructuring dimension - the shift from on premises implementations to cloud-based services. In this shift telecoms became just another form of data service delivered over fibre and 4G/5G broadband network that they themselves provided. This perfectly aligned with their broader strategies as network operators. 

Critically, moving services to the cloud enabled users to make and receive phone calls wherever they had internet access, be that at work, at home, or on the move. Their phone numbers were able to travel with them rather than being tied to a physical desk or location. Furthermore, enterprises were able to strip out the legacy switches and equipment from their offices and sites, thus freeing up the time and cost of supporting, upgrading, and replacing that equipment. 

The rationale for users and companies alike was sufficiently strong that 71% of the telecoms market had shifted to the cloud by 2024[1]. 

From standalone to globally connected 

The second restructuring dimension suited the big telcos far less. But, in the end, it was unavoidable due to the customer demand. This shift involved the integration of telephony into broader UC platforms, such as Microsoft Teams.  

Whilst out-of-the-box Teams is incredibly rich – messaging, channels, meetings, video calls and much more –telephony is the missing piece that needs specific and additional integration. 

Now, more companies have understandably been doing this integration to achieve ‘truly unified’ communications, from both a user experience and IT management perspective. Furthermore, it also means that telephony content can be included in the enterprise’s AI data set for fast-growing agent capabilities such as Copilot. 

This shift to UC-integrated Teams telephony was by no means instantly popular with the big telcos, given a significant proportion of the value add was provided by Microsoft through its cloud ‘Phone System’ functionality. Microsoft’s ability to monetise that through license extensions effectively impaired profitability for the major telcos. In the end, however, customer demand won and now more than a hundred telcos have joined the bandwagon on Microsoft’s Operator Connect and Direct Routing programmes. 

From one locality to all 

Now a third restructuring is rapidly taking hold in the multinational enterprise world. Until recently, multinationals have necessarily been working with multiple – often tens of – country-specific or regional telco vendors, each with their own contracts, tariff structures, administration portals (if indeed any at all), support services, and invoices. 

But why would these multinationals want to maintain such a regional patchwork of telco vendors when they are now managing Teams on a singular, global basis? Not only do they want their telephony integrated with their UC platform, but they also want the management of the whole communications stack to be globally consistent. Why have tens of telco vendors when you can just have one? 

The new breed of multinational cloud telephony providers 

Global service provision is fundamentally misaligned with the big telcos whose operations remain primarily as broadband service providers - physical in nature. What was once copper wires into buildings for telecoms, is now fibre into buildings for broadband, and the physical natural of those ‘last mile’ connections simply aren’t conducive to a global strategy. 

It is this defence against the big telcos, combined with the size of the market opportunity in Microsoft Teams telephony, and the compelling customer business case for multinational consolidation of vendors, that has paved the way for a new breed of multinational cloud telephony providers. 

These multinational cloud telephony providers embody all three key dimensions of innovation: cloud-based infrastructure, seamless UC integration, and global service delivery. With a single global vendor, multinational enterprises can avoid the inefficiencies, wasted resources, and fragmentation of working with multiple telcos in different regions, and move to a simplified world of one global contract, one global tariff and one global management portal – finally, truly unified communications.