Qunifi inks Vonage partnership to integrate Microsoft Teams for enterprises

Cloud unified communications (UC) integration management firm Qunifi, the operator of the Call2Teams Microsoft Office 365 voice integration service, has announced a partnership with Vonage to provide a fully integrated Microsoft Teams calling experience to Vonage Business Communications customers. 

Microsoft Teams, the business collaboration hub of the Microsoft Office suite, creates a single user environment for collaboration and communication, including the capability for regular phone calls. With this integration, Vonage users can use Call2Teams to enable the phone-calling feature in Microsoft Teams using their existing Vonage phone number, while continuing to access all the key features, integrations and services that Vonage’s UC solution provides, by simply adding Microsoft Teams integration as a per-user bolt-on.

The partnership with Vonage is designed to expand Qunifi’s strategy of working with a range of cloud unified comms and PBX manufacturers and providers, and address growing demand for Microsoft Teams integration through a simple add-on to an existing UC service.

“Customers are excited about using Microsoft Teams as a unified collaboration environment, but up to now, adding the Teams phone calling feature has been perceived as disruptive or costly. We have worked with Vonage to create a simple, per-user add-on to the Vonage Business Communications service, allowing customers to get all the benefits of Microsoft Teams while using the Vonage services they already have,” noted Qunifi co-founder and CEO Mark Herbert.

“Call2Teams is a simple cloud service that acts as a bridge between Microsoft Teams and the Vonage platform. This means there’s no hardware or software for Vonage customers to install, and the dial pad simply appears in Microsoft Teams, so customers start using it with the same Vonage numbers and call features they have today,” said Herbert.

“At Vonage, we…provide businesses with the tools they need to keep their employees and customers connected – both through...our product offering and through strategic partnerships,” said Bryan Stokes, vice-president of product management at Vonage.

“With this…integration to Microsoft Teams via Vonage’s…App Center ecosystem, we are ensuring Vonage customers can keep the services and features they rely on today, with the ability to add features and functionality in real time,” he added.

Adding functional elements to Teams is a hot topic right now. Users have been pressing Microsoft for an Outlook tab to provide access to email within the collaboration app in Teams for a while, and the feature has been officially “under review” since early 2018. Microsoft’s sluggishness on the issue comes despite signs that the inability to send and receive emails in Teams is preventing the app from being more widely used in some organisations. A Microsoft representative confirmed in mid-February 2020 that it was still mulling over whether to support the idea.