New Ways to Connect Your Business to the Cloud with Webex Calling

Guest Blogger: Jamie Palmer, Senior Director of Product Management for Cloud Calling at Cisco

Jamie is responsible for Webex Calling, UCM Cloud, HCS and BroadWorks product offerings. Jamie joined Cisco through the BroadSoft acquisition where he was the Vice President of Product Management. Jamie has served in many critical roles and has successfully led various teams throughout the growth of the company, including software development, systems architecture, sales engineering and now product management. At Cisco, Jamie continues to focus on the vision and strategy for the Cloud Calling platform portfolio.

Flexible Collaboration Solution With Your Business In Mind

By this point you’ve heard that the transition to the cloud is happening, but that cloud-only vendors can be limited in their flexibility when it comes to deployment and management. The one-size-fits all approach is efficient for the small business segment but can be problematic for medium and large enterprises. When it comes to critical business communications medium and large enterprises typically have complex deployments, existing relationships with carriers, and equipment already in place. A cloud communications solution that limits the carriers they can partner with, how they can connect to PSTN, and which equipment they can reuse can cause major headaches during a cloud transition including:

canceled contracts

early termination fees

losing pre-negotiated calling rates,

phone number porting issues

With Webex we’ve designed our collaboration solution with the flexibility required to address these challenges. Webex Calling provides the option to bring your own carrier (BYOC), allowing you to avoid early termination fees and maintain existing contracts, phone numbers, and calling rates. For larger companies with multiple sites we extend this flexibility across your business so you can pick the carrier and PSTN configuration that makes the most sense on a site by site basis.

Announcing a new BYOC Cloud Connected PSTN (CCP) Option

As we expand this flexibility even further, I’m excited to announce a new BYOC Cloud Connected PSTN (CCP) option with Webex Calling. Our new BYOC CCP option allows our customers to choose from a growing list of Global CCP PSTN partners and connect their preferred calling plan directly to the Webex platform, providing a simple cloud native PSTN solution with Webex Calling.

We are excited to have NTT and IntelePeer on board as two of our first partners in the CCP program.

Listen to what Nicolas Coudret, the Senior Director of Cloud UC at NTT and Robert Galop the Chief Marketing Officer at IntelePeer have to say about the opportunity:

“NTT is extremely pleased to be a part of this exciting program. The opportunity to further our work with Cisco and help the Cisco VAR community with their customers’ cloud communication journey represents a significant step in our joint offering. Answering to enterprise needs for a 100% complete cloud solution, Cisco VAR’s will now be able to offer their customers premium global calling plans aligned to Webex Calling delivered over NTT’s Tier 1 network. The program has been easy to onboard with and we are looking forward to working with Cisco and the VAR community on this offer.”
—Nicolas Coudret, Senior Director of Cloud UC at NTT

“As the original voice provider for Cisco Webex in 2016, IntelePeer has a history of delivering reliable and high-quality voice services for our Cisco Webex customers and partners. We are excited to continue our relationship with Cisco with this new offering.”
—Robert Galop, Chief Marketing Officer at IntelePeer

BYOC Local Gateway Option

In addition to our new BYOC CCP option we continue to offer our BYOC Local Gateway option for our customers who want to procure their PSTN services separately. This option gives the customer the ability to buy Webex Calling with PSTN service provided by virtually any carrier in the world.

Benefits of a BYOC local gateway option include:

Ultimate flexibility, no restriction on PSTN providers

Flexibility to serve any hard to reach branch office

Leverage existing local gateways to connect with Webex Calling

For those customers looking for a single contract, single bill experience, we have partnered with over 30 of the leading service providers around the world to deliver this experience globally. These service providers include some of the largest in the world, delivering the brand, quality, security and bundled solution many customers desire.

PSTN Flexibility Extends Across Your Enterprise on a Site-By-Site Basis

For our larger customers with multiple sites, Webex Calling allows you to choose your carrier and PSTN connection strategy on a site-by-site basis, delivering a seamless and secure calling experience, regardless of configuration. For example, let’s say you’ve purchased Webex Calling with a bundled calling plan from your favorite service provider in North America, but you have one site in Europe where they can’t offer service. With Webex Calling you’re free to enter into a different PSTN agreement for that branch office location and connect your PSTN services with a local gateway option or CCP partner that operates in that country. Best of all, any site regardless of configuration can be managed centrally though Webex Control Hub

Figure 2 —Multi-PSTN Connectivity allows Webex Calling customers to choose the PSTN configuration that makes sense for them on a site-by-site basis

With these enhancements and the other exciting announcements across the Webex collaboration portfolio, I could not be prouder of the recognition our team has received and the incredible response from our customers. Please stay tuned as there is more exciting news on the way for Webex.

Get More with Webex?

To stay up to date with what’s happening with Webex Calling check out the information below:

For additional information on Cloud Connected PSTN including a list of partners, check out our Cisco Community page.

Check out our What’s New in Webex Calling page to see what is in development for this quarter. Subscribe to receive real time updates as new content is added.

For more on availability go to our global availability page on Webex Help

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