Major Canadian University turns to ZIRO for Teams Phone Migration
Learn how a renowned Canadian university successfully migrates from Cisco to Microsoft Teams Phone.
Discover how a seamless transition is achieved by maintaining their carrier and endpoints, resulting in no service interruptions.
Like most large education institutions, this university leverages their existing Microsoft licenses to achieve significant cost savings.
ABOUT THE CUSTOMER
The customer is a public university known for its flexible approach to learning and a strong emphasis on community engagement. The university’s approach to education emphasizes experiential learning and interdisciplinary studies, and it is known for its vital research initiatives, particularly in areas like sustainability, digital arts, and urban futures. The university has a diverse student body, including many international students.
SITUATION
The university had recently shifted its education model from entirely on-campus to hybrid. This shift significantly increased the amount of electronic communications and prompted a change in how communications flows work. Leadership recognized that Microsoft Teams had become the primary collaboration tool with students and educators who were using it as an educational workspace.
Given the increased emphasis on remote learning and hybrid educational models, university leaders felt Teams offered a more flexible platform for online classes, meetings, and collaboration, which is essential in the university’s operations. Teams Calling is also viewed as more intuitive, which is especially important in an academic environment where ease of use for students and staff is a priority.
The university also hoped to achieve cost savings and improved scalability, security, and compliance.
CHALLENGE
Connectivity was one of the university’s most significant challenges in moving to Teams Calling. The university had a multi-year commitment to a carrier, which was mid-contract. The university needed to leverage this connectivity with Teams Calling.
The university also had planned to move from Primary Rate Interface (PRI) connectivity to Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) at the mid-point of the contract. The equipment supporting the PRI connectivity was nearing end-of-life, and the university lacked the internal bandwidth and expertise to achieve the transition.
The university attempted to leverage existing service provider relationships to move from PRI to SIP, but the change was not going smoothly. The transition from PRI to SIP involves a significant shift in how voice communications are handled and presents various technical and administrative challenges.
The university has a complex environment, and mapping out call flows was a significant challenge. They had many users who needed calling and small call center flows and customizations that needed to be analyzed and documented. Seasonality at the university was also a consideration as they have very high demand during periods like registration and the start of a new school year.
SOLUTION
Leaders at the university had an existing relationship with ZIRO management and turned to us for support. Although ZIRO had no formal relationship with the university, they had previously leaned on ZIRO for support of their Cisco system.
Following the contract signing, ZIRO took over the carrier relationship and support of the existing PRI connectivity. ZIRO secured and deployed new hardware to support SIP and worked with the carrier to transition the connectivity. As the SIP trunks were delivered, ZIRO’s DRaaS solution was deployed.
While connectivity was transitioning, ZIRO performed a detailed assessment of the existing calling environment. ZIRO established a plan to phase in Teams Calling in over several months. The initial group of test users included IT and administrative staff members. These first users began receiving calls through Teams within days after Carrier delivery
ZIRO’s DRaaS solution provided the connectivity bridge necessary to support the legacy phone system and Teams Calling during the transition, which occurred over three months. ZIRO automated the provisioning of users and migration of DIDs as users were migrated off the legacy system to Teams.
ZIRO’s platform for Microsoft (ZPM) made ongoing provisioning easy for the IT helpdesk at the university, easing the burden of continuing support of the Teams environment.
BENEFITS
The university successfully transitioned all daily calling needs and smaller call centers to Teams over three months.
They were able to leverage their existing carrier and endpoints and experienced no significant interruptions of service. ZIRO is now in the second phase of migrating major call centers to the new system.
We were completely stalled when we reached out to ZIRO, and they proved to be a white knight. It was amazing how quickly they assessed our needs, developed a plan, engaged the carrier, and pulled this transition off!
There has been a notable reduction in the demand for communications support due to familiarity with Teams and the intuitive calling integration.
The helpdesk can now handle all moves, adds and changes without involving 3rd parties or internal UC support.
Our helpdesk is now handling all the daily tasks our engineers use to handle, and we’re now able to leverage those engineers on more strategic digital transformation initiatives.
The university is experiencing significant cost savings, as they were able to leverage their existing Microsoft licensing.
The university is now experimenting with Microsoft Co-Pilot to enhance collaboration and productivity within internal staff.
OLD CONFIGURATION
- Cost is fixed and inflexible
- Requires additional hardware
- Requires more lines
- Old Telecom protocol
- Not Mobile
OLD CONFIGURATION
- Cost Flexibility (pay for what you need)
- Less hardware maintenance
- Scalable at less expense
- Uses latest telecom protocol
- High mobility