Trustmarque partners with Gamma for MS Teams Voice

Read how Trustmarque switched their telephony from Microsoft Calling Plans to Gamma Telecom’s Operator Connect for Teams Phone System.

Background

For over 30 years, Trustmarque has delivered the value of technology to the public and private sectors. Our customer base spans tens of thousands of users including large public sector bodies and commercial enterprises. 

After a period of rapid of growth, Trustmarque looked to a strategic partner, Gamma, to drive ahead with improving their own telephony networking. Trustmarque had been using a solution which could no longer support the organisation’s growing network demand. With Trustmarque’s existing use of MS E5 licensing, it was a relatively simple step to switch from MS calling plans to Operator Connect, which would better support the businesses need to reduce costs and increase functionality. 

“Trustmarque is going through a significant evolution, and our calling solutions had to be stepped up to balance resource demand and cost against capability. We tapped into our internal experts in the VNS team due to their excellent track record of delivering successful unified communications outcomes with Gamma technologies.”

Howard Laban, Head of Voice Network Services, Trustmarque

Gamma is a leading provider of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) across the UK, supplying communication solutions via its extensive network of trusted channel partners. Trustmarque, the client, is a value-added managed service provider with nearly 40 years’ experience of delivering IT solutions and services in the public and private sectors. With a track record of delivering cutting edge telephony and networking solutions, in the words of Trustmarque’s Head of Voice Network Services, Howard Laban “we knew it was time to taste our own champagne”, and capitalise on Gamma and Trustmarque’s award-winning partnership in voice capability.

The challenge:

 Initially apprehensive about the scale of migration effort and complexities around the migration, Trustmarque’s IT team engaged with their own internal VNS team and an existing UCaas partner, Gamma, to explore options to modernise their cloud telephony provision. With the team being able to demonstrate significant use cases from various sectors , the IT team was confident that the VNS team would be able to deliver on the proposed solution in a timely manner and to meet all the stated requirements.

One of the key requirements, was to extend to more employees the capability for international calling at the same time as reducing the cost for this functionality – this would support the companies growing need to work with clients outside the UK.

The Solution

During the projects exploratory phase, in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the solution fully, the Trustmarque VNS team ran a simple proof of concept (PoC). This enabled the Trustmarque IT team to see how seamlessly the service integrates with their Teams environment. The PoC environment would effectively become the working in-life solution for all users.

Once the PoC was completed and all success criteria were met, the teams moved on to the next phase of the process and migrated end users into that environment. This was done in a phased approach, with the migration of many broken telephone number ranges from Microsoft to the Gamma’s Operator Connect service. This complexity was managed jointly between Gamma, Trustmarque and Microsoft. Finally, international and mobile calling was enabled for individual users as they moved onto the new solution.

Outcome

The undisruptive nature of the solution made it an attractive proposition, with Trustmaque choosing it due to it being the fastest way to introduce the greatest level of cost saving with no impact to users. It also enables calling to any external number with no limitation and with international calls being charged at competitive rates and only for what is consumed. Operator Connect now allows Trustmarque to manage call routing services entirely via the Microsoft Teams ecosystem for a more streamlined operation, as IT Manager Gavin Pipes explains:

“We hadn’t previously worked with our own VNS team and they engaged with us in the same way they would with any customer – understanding our requirements, goals and constraints, to build a workable solution and plan.”

Gavin Pipes, IT Manager at Trustmarque  

Operator Connect has enabled Trustmarque to consolidate telephony services on a single platform with a common level of service available to all users. The move further improves the return on the investment made in Microsoft licencing. 

The project took 8 weeks to complete, from the first meeting to implementation. The highlights of the project include:

• No disruption noticed by 400+ end users
• Consolidationn of number ranges
• Managed porting co-ordinated by VNS, involving Gamma and Microsoft
• Significant cost saving and cost management, including:
• 6-week payback on capital outlay (Professional Services)
• Projected 70% cost reduction over three years 
• International Calling is now available to all employees (but controlled in TAC)
• ‘Only pay for what you use’ model has resulted in a 90% cost reduction

Part of its appeal is the direct connection with the Microsoft ecosystem, a familiar environment in most organisations today. Thanks to our long-standing and successful partnership with Gamma, the Trustmarque VNS team were able to influence improvements to migration planning for MS Teams projects. 

Trustmarque now aims to roll-out the solution to another division of the company, which makes a higher volume of international calls, so we expect the benefit to be even more noticeable in the coming year. 

“We are looking forward to delivering the same flexibility and additional call capability across all of our business.” 

Richard Bewley (IT Director)

Gamma

Gamma Telecom, is part of the Microsoft Operator Connect programme, and one of a smaller number of partners selected to deliver the service through its value-added reseller channel.  With over 15 years’ experience enabling voice solutions for Microsoft, Gamma understands business requirements and can help you get the most out of your Microsoft Teams environment.

Trustmarque 

For a third year in a row, Trustmarque has been singled out by Gamma as the highest-performing reseller in Microsoft Teams Phone Reseller of the Year category. Since 2021, Trustmarque has been awarded this coveted title in recognition of our success in deploying secure, effective voice and video collaboration for our customers’ Microsoft Teams environments. The criteria for being awarded this title is in acknowledgement of the diverse range of customers we have helped through future-ready digital connectivity solutions based on Gamma technology.