“New” and “Awesome” Zoom and Microsoft Teams Integration

As the heading suggests, we are going to discuss “Zoom Phone implementation for organization’s using Microsoft Teams as the core collaboration platform”.

Yes, you heard it right! Zoom is out with a DRaaS solution for Microsoft Teams users. It means organizations can choose powerful Zoom Telephony platform and still use MS Teams app to make and receive calls, seamlessly. This also means that they don’t need MS Teams Telephony Solutions like Operator Connect, Calling plans etc.

In this blog, we will discuss:

1) What is MS Teams DRaaS?

2) What are the solution options for Zoom Phone on MS Teams?

3) Zoom Phone DRaaS Architecture

4) Benefits of using heterogeneous platforms

5) Licensing Requirements

Let’s begin!

Before you read further, I want you to know, that choosing Zoom solution over other Native MS Teams Solution depends on the customer’s requirements and business needs. As a Consultant, your objective is to identify the business use case and value and then create a solution. This blog is in no way to promote Zoom over MS Teams or visa versa.

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What is MS Teams DRaaS?

In simple words, Direct Routing As A Service is used to enable Enterprise Voice on MS Teams for PSTN connectivity. Using DRaaS, you can connect your own provider “BYOC” to MS Teams for enterprise voice needs.

As per UC Today, around 70% of organizations use Teams UCaaS or are planning to do soon.

UC Today

You can explore https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/pstn-connectivity for more details.

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What are the solution options for Zoom Phone on MS Teams?

Let’s see this scenario.

ABC Corporation has over 10K employees and uses “MS Teams for Chat and Collaboration” and “Zoom for PSTN Telephony”. So for an end user, they have to use 2 UC apps for different purposes. This context switching between apps causes degradation in user experience. To fix this, ABC corps CIO decides to consolidate UC technology to one platform viz MS Teams.

Now ABC Corp has one of the 2 options:

1) Either remove Zoom and use MS Teams Telephony Solution (Calling Plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing ) or

2) Continue using the feature rich Zoom Telephony platform.

CIO wishes to continue with Zoom Telephony and MS Teams Collaboration platform. Now to solve user experience issues, there are 2 ways that his voice architect can look at:

1) Use Zoom App from the Microsoft Teams marketplace.

2) Use Zoom phone for Microsoft Teams. This feature got released in May/June 23 timeframe.

Note: No Zoom App needed to be downloaded from Microsoft Store. Calling is done using native Teams client

Now, let me explain this option 2 here.

Zoom phone uses SIP trunk to directly integrate with MS Teams tenant. This is similar to sbc’s hosted in cloud or using any service providers Direct Routing as a Service.

Surprised!

Yes, Zoom phone integrates directly with MS Teams tenant as BYOC setup. Users will be able to use Microsoft Teams as their productivity suite and make/receive calls via the native dialer “But” use Zoom telephony backend without them knowing it. This will allow users to use the native Microsoft Teams client for calling without needing a Zoom Marketplace App. Zoom will provide the PSTN numbers for inbound/outbound calling.

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Zoom Phone DRaaS Architecture

As you see in the diagram above, MS teams PSTN Gateways are configured with Zoom FQDN. So basically, Zoom acts as a service provider for Microsoft Teams deployment.

Zoom becomes a multi-tenant solution for it’s different customers.

Quick Comparison of the 2 Zoom Solutions

Zoom app from Microsoft Store	Zoom Phone for MS Teams DRaaS
Zoom native experience within Teams	Native Teams Experience
Zoom Client to run in parallel to MS Teams app	No Zoom client requirement for inbound and outbound calling
Microsoft Phone System License not required	Microsoft Phone System License required

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Benefits of using Zoom Phone as DRaaS

I think 3rd reason alone is powerful enough for organizations to choose Zoom DRaaS.

Please bear in mind, this is a fairly new offering from Zoom, hence there are few limitations now. I would not recommend implementing this globally right now, but it makes sense to conduct POC’s to understand the real value.

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Licensing Requirements

1) Microsoft 365 Business (Basic, Standard or Premium) + Teams Phone System + Zoom Phone for Microsoft Teams Add-On AND Zoom Phone Pro / Zoom One etc..

2) E1 or E3 or M1 or M3 + Teams Phone System + Zoom Phone for Microsoft Teams Add-On AND Zoom Phone Pro / Zoom One etc..

3) E5 or M5 + Zoom Phone for Microsoft Teams Add-On AND Zoom Phone Pro / Zoom One etc..

4) Common Area Phones does not support this currently.

Well, it’s important to understand what OEM’s are doing and keeping oneself updated.

That’s it Folks! Let me know what you think about the blog. Please share and do comment your thoughts. I am always interested to know different perspectives and learn from you. Please post for any questions, comments. I can also be reached at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.