The Path from PBX to Microsoft Teams Phone with Tom Garland, Global Service Delivery Manager

Tom Garland, Global Service Delivery Manager at Willis Towers Watson shares an insight to the journey from traditional PBX systems to Skype for Business, and then to Microsoft Teams.

• Key considerations and challenges in implementing such large-scale telephony changes across a diverse global workforce 
• The importance of aligning projects with business requirements and managing user expectations to prevent operational complications
• Specific regional challenges, and experience in implementing Operator Connect in countries like India
• The importance of adhering to compliance requirements through sophisticated call recording systems and practical approaches for managing call data efficiently

Thanks to Pure IP, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support.

Transcript

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Tom Garland: I think the biggest thing is pretty just simplify as best you can. And again, be strong with your user base. Yes, there's a lot so you can do within Teams. But does that then become an operational nightmare when you come to manage some of those bespoke solutions that you're trying to deliver? We've had offices wanting common area phones everywhere.

They want IVRs for receptions, which are all very doable. It's just really taking stock of what is needed. What's that business requirement?

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast this week, I have a great conversation with Tom Garland at WTW all about their voice journey initially to Skype for Business and then to Microsoft Teams, a big global deployment, lots of interesting countries, including doing Operator Connect in India and Tom's the first person I've talked to who's done Operator Connect in India.

So really great conversation. Thanks to Tom for all the insights and also thanks to Pure IP who are the sponsor of the podcast. Really appreciate their support on with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. You know, we like to get customer perspective on the podcast. I think that's where we get some real insights and I've been fortunate to know Tom for a few years and he's got a great, uh, voice story to tell us, uh, all at WTW.

So, uh, Tom, could you just introduce yourself and give us a little bit of context about your role? 

Tom Garland: Yeah, thanks, Tom. So Tom Garland, the Operations Manager at WTW. I've been with Willis and WTW for over nine years now, and the last seven years has been my voice journey. So starting off implementing Skype Enterprise Voice in support of agile working across our offices globally.

And then more laterally, it's been migrating off of Skype and moving to Teams and further, further rollouts where we're replacing legacy PBX and moving to Teams Enterprise Voice. So both on a direct routing and Operator Connects model. So lots of, lots of change and challenges with each of those components going through.

Tom Arbuthnot: And it's a, a, a big old environment. I think you're somewhere around 30, 000 users and like over a hundred countries, like it's a, it's a. Decently complex environment. 

Tom Garland: Absolutely. So we've got just under 30, 000, um, enterprise voice colleagues. So that's just over 55 percent of the organization that's using Teams voice now.

And we're in, yeah, over 120 countries globally. So quite a, quite a big estate, lots to go through. And we're kind of at that bottom of the barrel now where. You know, we've done, done some of the easier locations into some of those harder, harder countries to implement into. So 

Tom Arbuthnot: awesome. So take us back cause you've been there a while.

Um, what, what was the journey from kind of traditional PBX to initially to Skype for business? 

Tom Garland: So we had, we implemented Skype for Business as our global conferencing platform. So we're using, you know, Skype conferencing to start with. And then as that evolved and progressed, and like I said, in support of the agile working, we moved to Skype Enterprise Voice.

Um, And that's where our journey went through, and that was pre merger, so that was in the Willis days, and then obviously we merged with Towers Watson to become Willis Towers Watson, so then it was bringing those two environments together and looking at where we had two offices for each of the legacy companies, you know, bringing those into a single space, bringing that agile working and moving to To Skype voice at the time, so and we've still got a number of PBX out there.

We've been running a simplification program for the last two years, looking at all of our offices with PBX and moving them to Teams voice. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And you had a, uh, I can still have, we can talk about that, but like had a pretty decent SBC estate like that was all in house dedicated SBCs in different regions. 

Tom Garland: We did.

So we had centralized pools of SBCs, paired pools. So we had, you know, two pools in the US, New York and Nashville, supporting all of our US and Canada offices. We had Amir in Ipswich in London, supporting all of our Amir and UK offices. And then we had APAC in Singapore and Australia and also a couple of SBCs in India.

So they were all used primarily for, um, conferencing to start with, you know, India. And then we had those paired pools for our enterprise voice estate, which. Some of those are still operational. We've managed to get rid of some of those, um, centralized pools in favor of moving to cloud routing via OperatorConnect.

So that's simplified things a lot further. Obviously, with that comes the challenges of what's been connected to those SBCs. So we've had legacy AV devices that have been direct connects and needed to be remediated to be able to Get off those SBCs and we've still got, you know, a lot of connections within our Amir hub where we've still got, you know, Cisco core manager in, in, in play, we've got, um, lift phones and, um, security phones and things that still need solutions to be able to fully move off those.

But we've been, been working through those and getting, getting close to remediating most of those to be able to go through, you know, the. Mid this year is the plan to close down the, uh, the EMEA pools and get all of those central clusters done. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And that's part of your journey to Teams is kind of taking, obviously you would have been running the Skype business servers and the SBCs.

You're starting to go to more cloud first, so Teams, SBC in the cloud, Operator Connect. Is that right? 

Tom Garland: Absolutely. So we've, and still do have around 37 SBCs in the estate. And that's hoping to get down to around 19 through this year, which is just the local breakouts. So where we're having to use a local SIP provider and either for local regulations or legal reasons having to have those breakouts.

So UAE, China, um, some parts of LATAM where we, you know, we can't do Operator Connect. Either there's not a provider or partner to do it yet, or it's just those local regulations that. don't permit to being able to go cloud routing. So, 

Tom Arbuthnot: and what, what, what drove you, you, I think you're Pure IP for direct routing and operator connect for a lot of the countries.

What, what drove you to kind of go from direct routing to operator connect? Was it that transition from a dedicated SPC to cloud service? What's that look like? 

Tom Garland: Yeah. So it's, it's also aligned to our network strategy. So we've gone for a, um, you know, removing, um, The MPLS connections and going for, you know, just direct Internet access across a lot of our offices now.

So simplifying what we have in offices and closing a lot of our data centers as well where these SBCs were housed. So it's really simplifying it, moving it, you know, moving everything to the cloud. Certainly from your administration perspective, it's a lot simpler. Um, we have had some more complex solutions within that were set up from Skype days and certainly some offices where we're trying to meet the needs of the business and the requirements they have on their legacy PBX and moving to Teams.

Sometimes Operator Connect doesn't allow some of those translations you can do on the SBCs, but we've managed to simplify and overcome a lot of those, which has been great. And thankfully with, you know, the wonderful things you can do with auto attends and call queues or some of those complex call routings, you can actually deliver within Teams.

So it's, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah, 

Tom Garland: it's been quite successful in that regard. 

Tom Arbuthnot: How's it been from a user transition experience, I guess, for users going from PBX to Teams and for users going from Skype for Business to Teams, I'm assuming Skype for Business to Teams is Soft phone, soft phone was easier for the users. Is that fair? 

Tom Garland: Yeah, certainly.

Yeah. I've always sort of gone with the premise of, you know, if you can use a calculator, you can use Teams, right? So it's quite, quite a simple, simple approach. We used to back when we were implementing Skype, we used to have full on training programs, you know, onsite in offices, you know, doing managing that transition.

And then I think the further we. We came along, it was more allowing other offices and colleagues to catch up with their peers. You know, they've all got this enterprise voice calling capability. It's a lot simpler, straightforward of, you know, got their, their phone with them, whether wherever their laptop is.

So, you know, that journey became a lot simpler, you know, having just built in training modules that we just go and give the guidance to the colleagues, you know, we're not doing those standup training sessions anymore. It's. It's a lot more the norm. You know, it's a lot more straightforward. And 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah, it feels like they're the whole whole market.

Whole world has kind of moved on to where, like, software first is pretty natural now. And like that's a dialer. And, uh, and obviously all the meetings going online kind of helped that story because like, well, obviously I use the same same experience, my meetings and my calling. 

Tom Garland: And that's true with, you know, certainly, you know, for WTW, you know, our acceleration to Teams was helped no end through COVID, you know, we rolled out Teams quicker than we would have done that, you know, under normal working environment.

So, you know, that, that really helped things people work from home, being able to, you know, get them connected and. Operating as normal and the same with the return to office and meeting spaces, you know, colleagues are now used to using their own kit in their own environments and how they, you know, they know how to operate it and how to join meetings.

And the same when they then return to the office, you know, is there that remembering how to use the equipment that's in that meeting space. And we've moved to a more bring your own device model. So it's a lot more plug and play. And again, that streamlined the, you know, the end user experience. 

Tom Arbuthnot: So I'd love to dive into that rooms and BYOD conversation.

I'm just back off of ISE and there was lots of conversation about BYOD. And I feel like your environment is, uh, you know, professionals, highly demanding environment. Have you found BYOD and people plugging in has that all worked for the business? 

Tom Garland: It has. It's, um, you know, again, part of closing down the Skype infrastructure, we had to remediate a lot of our AV devices to make them, you know, make sure we're using Teams compatible.

So through that process, we put in a lot of the poly studio bars, and they were just based on a plug and play basis. So putting a docker in the meeting space, allowing colleagues to take their laptops, plug in and use that meeting room effectively. And that's certainly revamped our AV standards. You know, we still have a number of different room types, but having that BYOD model has made it a lot easier for that end user just to come in, know what they're working with.

Again, that's that transition from being in your home office to being in the work office. You can then just You're using your laptop, you're plugging in with USB C and away you go. So it's certainly made made it a lot more straightforward. It's it's less guidance. Colleagues are not having to click on QR codes and refresh themselves before the meeting starts.

Certainly produced a lot of those queries when my meetings not started, or I don't know how to use the kit or 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah, I didn't. I didn't invite the room somehow. Exactly. 

Tom Garland: And you know, you have these these guidance and QR codes and things, but you know, no one does that prep for the meeting to make sure they read it, go through it.

So yeah, the BYOD models really worked out. Well, it's it is improved that end user experience and allowed us to refresh meeting spaces to our current environment as well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it feels like Microsoft are investing in that space a lot of the moment as well. I think having the A V devices auto detect and pop up and having the second screen effectively be the stage.

It feels like Microsoft are kind of acknowledging that that is a strategy for some people. 

Tom Garland: Yeah, it certainly is. It works. And again, you know, from a room standards and from a cost perspective, you know, not having those touch panels and sensor at the table. It just reduces the cost and complexity for those end users entering that space and knowing what they're doing.

So, yeah, I'd say it's been a success story for us. worthwhile. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Interesting. And what about physical devices for users? Are you mostly soft phone or the physical IP phones? What does that look like? 

Tom Garland: So again, for us, it's all just, um, Teams client for enterprise voice, you know, soft phones. You know, we have common area devices where we're needed.

Um, You know, in terms of where we need, um, handsets in, you know, reception spaces or doctor's offices or anything like that. But yeah, our soft phones are all just, um, Teams, laptop, mobile app. Um, and again, we're, we're moving away from any of the, the soft phone devices that were through Cisco and CUCMs in favor of moving to Teams.

Tom Arbuthnot: Cool. Um, what are you doing when it comes to, uh, compliance and recording and all that stuff? 

Tom Garland: So for true call, um, compliance call recording, we're using Numonix cloud, and that's been working really well for us. So we've got that in operation in the UK, Germany, um, Australia and Asia back and Israel, I think is the location that we're using it.

So that's, you know, keeping us compliant with with Mifid and other regulatory requirements as well as having, um, The calls recording for your training and complaint purposes for some other lines of business. So Numonix is great the way you can set up various different recording profiles. You can really hone in on what is being recorded and what isn't.

Um, whereas the Skype days was Redbox. It was just record everything. Huge data dumps of recorded calls. 

Tom Arbuthnot: So you've got some very specific scenarios, like record this cool scenario, but not this cool scenario or Numonix has some clever stuff around, like meeting titles and all sorts of things.

Tom Garland: It does. So you can, yeah, you can have, um, Particular meeting tasks or keywords.

So it's, uh, you know, do not record or record certain meetings. I've got it recording calls, you know, either inbound or just outbound of particular call queues. So where we're using call queues for dial out as well as, um, inbound, you know, those calls are captured. So it's really honing in to make sure that all of the generic peer to peer calls are not being captured, you know, internal meetings are not being captured.

And just. The true, you know, client calls are there. So we've got various different flavors of recording profiles, which was, is, is fun and a bit of a headache, but it's, you know, it's, it's great that it's so flexible that we can tweak those around and meet each business need. And as well as that, we've got record on demand in a couple of locations as well.

So no profiles, but just having a, an app that just records on demand as needed. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. And what's your. Is there a global standard around convenience recording and transcription? Like, do you allow that by default, not allow, or does it break down by country and region? 

Tom Garland: It's, yeah, it depends on any, yeah, local and country restrictions, but we don't have, so just for standard, um, Microsoft Teams meetings.

You know, we don't use transcription that's turned off in most instances, but the ability to record is available. Most Germany doesn't have it, um, by example. So there's some some locations that have that turned off and we have various profiles within Teams to select who who is able to record and who isn't.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It's interesting. Um, with the AI stuff coming, how the transcription, like it feels like in, in your vertical, like transcription off seems to be the default, but now with the AI tools, the ability that the want to capture that is interesting. 

Tom Garland: Exactly. And certainly with the translations as well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah.

Makes sense. Awesome. Um, another thing I wanted to dive into was, uh, India. Cause you, you, you're one of the few people I've spoken to that's actually, uh, done the new OC in India thing. So can you take us through what, first of all, what that is and how that's worked out for you? 

Tom Garland: I could start with painful, but we have got there.

So yeah, it's been challenging. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It's interesting because I talked to all the telcos when it launched and normally the telcos are. Pretty happy to talk to me about this is how it works. It's what it is. And it was all very quiet for a long while. 

Tom Garland: Yeah, they all, they all promised the, you know, you start off, you know, approaching a vendor and they can, yeah, we can do that.

And then you dig into it and they can't. So, you know, the vendor we've gone with, you know, first this is, yes, we can offer OC, but they want to dedicate to the MPLS trunks, which, you know, it goes against our new network model as an increased cost. It was, you know, it's not the OC that we're used to have just that very simple, straightforward cloud routing, you know, infrastructure.

Um, so it took a number of months to wait for iterations and working with Microsoft and the operator to, to fully get licensed. I think that was the first one was, yeah, we can do OC. But we're not quite there yet. Um, and then, you know, once we actually did get connected and set up some users, you know, we had some challenges around, you know, offering the true mobile capability or, um, fixed.

So we do have, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah. Cause there's two scenarios, isn't there? So one is. You have OC in India, but you're, it's basically IP phone to the desk. So it's not really OC like we, or Teams phone like we think about it. And then there is an option for some mobility. 

Tom Garland: Exactly. And we've got both. So we've got, um, you know, one location in India that is fixed.

So it's, you know, that. Teams calling is only available to those colleagues when they're in the office. So outside of the office, it's it doesn't work. So again, it's got the location for rules there. And then we've got some other offices in Mumbai that do have the full mobile operator connect and it's and it's working well.

Um, there's some challenges around setting up some of those common area devices, so they, they then need to be reversed to be fixed rather than, um, mobile, but it's, it's got there. And I think. I guess I wasn't convinced we were going to get there, and we're now, you know, entering that journey in the Philippines and Thailand and, um, Vietnam, actually, at the moment, um, I'm interested as to whether we do get that full capability as we're as we're used to in other regions.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's interesting. You're on that journey to being, uh, cloud first where you can, but you've definitely got some of the countries that just get really. Tricky in terms of compliant cloud native service versus local SBC. 

Tom Garland: Exactly. And some of the, you know, you almost some of the headaches we've been through, you know, it's pretty sometimes worth going direct routing and using the SBCs.

Certainly, you know, India, we had SBC estate already, you know, we could have, could have had a SIP trunk connection from, you know, the likes of Tata or. You know, other vendors and, and set that up and had a little bit greater control over it. But, um, you know, thankful to say we, we have got there, um, where we get to with the Philippines in the coming weeks and months will be another interest.

Tom Arbuthnot: No, we'll have to, we'll have to revisit the pot at some point, we will see if we get 

Tom Garland: to and see if we get that 37 SBCs down to 19. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And Tom, I guess lastly, it'd be great. You've been on this journey like lots of complex countries, you've done a lot. What would your advice be to other customers around moving to Teams phone and more cloud native calling?

Tom Garland: I think the biggest thing is pretty just simplify as best you can. So, you know, and again, be strong with your user base. Yes, there's a lot so you can do within Teams. But does that then become an operational nightmare when you come to manage some of those bespoke solutions that you're trying to deliver?

So, you know, we've had a lot of those. We've had, um, offices wanting, you know, common area phones everywhere. They want IVRs for receptions, which are all very doable. Um, But it's, it's just really taking stock of what is needed. What's that business requirement? How do we simplify it as much as possible and make sure that operator connect can meet those needs?

Because, you know, The wonderful things you can do on a direct routing basis and having those SBCs to, you know, do core transformations you can't do within Teams operates connect. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. So you're locking yourself into needing customer SBC config and supporting the SBC and, and operationalizing that support, I guess.

Tom Garland: Exactly. So, you know, it's just making sure that you really simplify, don't promise the world, try and do things as, as cleanly and. Simply as you can, I think would be my best advice and be strong with users and their requirements. You know, we are bringing a benefit to the office and the end users in terms of that mobility and agility of Teams voice.

So just keep it, keep it as straightforward as you can. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. Good advice. I love it. Anybody that's preaching for standards or simplification are more for 

Tom Garland: absolutely good luck trying to achieve it. There's always those deviations. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, well, Tom, thanks for sharing the journey. It's really interesting. And it sounds like a great success in terms of the project.

And yeah, maybe we revisit at some point and see, see how many of those SBCs you've got down next year and what the architecture looks like. 

Tom Garland: Absolutely. No, thanks, Tom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: All right. Cheers. 

Tom Garland: Okay. Take care.