MetriNote: Metrics-Based Strategic Advice from Metrigy
VOSS launches Partner Pivot Program
What’s the news?
September 27, 2022
VOSS Solutions, announced a partnership with Microsoft for the launch of its Partner Pivot Program for service providers and managed service providers that run and manage outdated UCaaS platforms in their networks such as Cisco HCS or support on-premises phone and collaboration solutions. The objective of the program is to help these partners transition to selling and supporting Microsoft Teams and Teams Phone in order to retain existing customers as they migrate to the cloud.
The Partner Pivot Program includes service planning and enablement professional services (design, built, test and commission), an automated path to migrate end-customers to Microsoft
Teams, engagement with Microsoft, and the VOSS UC performance and automation toolset. The pitch to service providers is that working with Microsoft will open new sales opportunities with
SMEs and accelerate deployments of Microsoft Operator Connect and VOSS is the glue to make the transition.
What do our metrics say?
Although various communication and collaboration tools, including meetings and team collaboration, have become widely adopted through cloud services, telephony systems have lagged in the migration to true multi-tenant cloud-based services. In our Workplace Collaboration Metricast 2022 global research study, 45% of 935 respondent companies are still on legacy phone platforms, either on-premises or in dedicated hosted environments. This represents a sizeable number of businesses that could move to cloud-based phone services.
What’s Metrigy’s take?
For most businesses, moving phone systems to the cloud makes sense. Older, on-premises or dedicated/hosted telephony platforms are becoming obsolete and are less likely to integrate with other applications now being run from the cloud, making them silos in companies’ workplace collaboration toolset. The path companies take to work directly with a UCaaS provider—or utilize a reseller or service provider—runs the gambit.
Service providers, including traditional telcos and managed service providers, have struggled for years with the right mix of services to take advantage of the migration to cloud telephony. These services have included their own UCaaS offerings; dedicated, private hosting of telephony systems for individual customers; or SIP connections to UCaaS providers or the end-customer directly. In the end companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, and RingCentral are winning the business. However, service providers can partner with offers like Microsoft for Team Phone and VOSS with its new partner program enables providers to make the switch while still retaining customers and adding value. Migrating to a new platform is not a simple undertaking which VOSS is focused on for these providers.
What does Metrigy recommend?
For traditional service providers and MSPs, the best opportunity is to work with the leading UCaaS providers rather than compete against them. That means partnering with them for the SIP
connections to customers and working with those customers to help on the migration. Microsoft is not the easiest vendor with which to partner, but Teams has become a leading meetings and
collaboration platform globally and many organizations are evaluating Teams (or have already migrated) for telephony replacement for an all-in-one platform. We recommend working with a
company such as VOSS for the performance and automation of UCaaS platforms, including Microsoft Teams Phone.
Writer: Diane Myers, Principal Analyst, Metrigy
ABOUT METRIGY: Metrigy is an innovative research firm focusing on the rapidly changing areas of Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC), digital workplace, digital transformation, and Customer Experience (CX)/contact center—along with several related technologies. Metrigy delivers strategic guidance and informative content, backed by primary research metrics and analysis, for technology providers and enterprise organizations.
