Verizon Business enriches mobile endpoint for Microsoft Teams

With hybrid working established and the need for mobile communications now returning rapidly, Verizon Business has announced the launch of Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams, with the aim of bringing enterprise-grade voice quality and policy management to Teams calls to and from mobile devices.

Sampath Sowmyanarayan, chief revenue officer at Verizon Business, said the company was continuing to see global demand for unified calling platforms to keep distributed workforces connected.

“Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams answers that customer demand and will make an immediate impact on the collaboration industry,” he said. “Verizon is helping large enterprise customers to adapt and succeed in today’s hybrid work environment by delivering a best-in-class suite of professional services spanning voice, security and network-as-a-service solutions to power the mobile workforce.”

The new combined service will integrate a customer’s Verizon Wireless business number with Microsoft Teams, giving users the option of placing outbound calls through the Microsoft Teams desktop application, an integrated IP phone, or directly through the native dialler on their mobile device.

By elevating a user’s mobile identity to become a unified calling and collaboration endpoint, said Verizon, Mobile for Microsoft Teams can empower customers to apply enterprise policies to mobile numbers easily and quickly, reducing the costs of managing mobile and desktop phones and offering a path to consolidating all activity on mobile handsets where appropriate.  

Key benefits of the combination include mobile manageability, whereby providing users with a single mobile phone number for business can be managed easily by IT administration with enterprise-grade calling policies in Teams. Another benefit is said to be unified call control, giving the ability to converge voicemail, call history and presence information across endpoints, and direct call queues to mobile numbers.

Network flexibility allows users to move calls between networks and endpoints easily, including uplifting calls from the cellular voice network to VoIP data calls with video and screensharing.Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams complements the existing Verizon VoIP for Operator Connect system for fixed line voice services.

Verizon believes that the popularity of Teams, combined with the scale and reliability of its global network, will provide enterprise customers with a secure, managed, multi-device system that blends connectivity, calling and administration under one easy-to-use customer interface and calling plan.

“This collaboration with Verizon allows us to combine the power of cloud, cellular and edge to deliver tightly integrated mobile calling and business collaboration workflows that are reliable, secure, device- and network-agnostic, all while being cost-efficient and simple for the customers to manage a single calling offering,” said Martin Lund, CVP of Azure for Operators.

“The solution leverages the power of Azure to accelerate the migration of critical workflows to the cloud and benefits from Microsoft’s expertise in providing managed services that enable operators to quickly certify with Teams Operator Connect.”