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Solutions · UCaaS and Teams Phone

What actually changes when you leave the PABX behind

A cloud phone system is not a like-for-like swap. The handsets change, the call flows get rebuilt, and a handful of things nobody thought about become the hard part. Here is the honest version.

Solutions

What a modern phone system actually includes

Calling that follows the person

One number reaching a desk phone, a laptop and a mobile, with the same extension, voicemail and call history in all three. Much of the cost case rests here, because desk phones stop being mandatory.

Call flows you can edit yourself

Menus, queues, hunt groups and after-hours rules changed in a browser in minutes, rather than logged as a request with a carrier. This is the change administrators notice first.

Meetings and messaging in the same licence

Video, screen sharing and team chat bundled with calling. Whether that is a saving or a duplication depends entirely on what you already pay for elsewhere.

Reporting that shows what is happening

Who is on the phone, how long callers wait, which queues abandon. Basic in every platform, and genuinely useful the moment somebody owns it.

The real differences

How the platforms genuinely differ

Feature lists converge. These three shapes do not.

One vendor, everything

Phone, meetings, messaging and a contact centre on one contract. Simplest to buy and administer.

◆Fewest moving parts and one support path
◆Contact centre is usually the weakest part of the bundle
◆Strong when the requirement is broad but not deep

AI in the product, not the roadmap

Transcription, live coaching and call summaries built in rather than sold as a later tier.

◆Strongest where sales and support teams will use it daily
◆Worth testing on your own accents and call types
◆Lighter on legacy PBX behaviours and large device estates

Deliberately simple

Reliable telephony and meetings without enterprise features you will never switch on.

◆Lowest administration burden
◆Runs out of room on complex routing
◆The right answer more often than vendors admit

Calling inside Microsoft Teams

No separate app at all. Teams becomes the phone, using licensing you may already hold.

◆Lightest change management if people live in Teams
◆No native contact centre, so queues need a platform on top
◆Three different ways to connect it, covered below

If you are going with Teams

Three ways to connect Teams to the phone network

This one choice sets your carrier options, your commercial leverage and who owns support when a call fails.

Operator Connect

A carrier is added to your tenant through the Microsoft admin centre. Least effort, and the carrier owns the voice path.

◆Fastest to stand up, no session border controllers
◆Carrier list is fixed, so your options are narrower
◆Clearest support model: one party owns the calling

Direct Routing

You bring your own carrier through session border controllers, hosted or on premises.

◆Widest carrier choice and the most commercial leverage
◆More moving parts to configure and monitor
◆Usually the answer at higher volumes or unusual requirements

Microsoft Calling Plans

Microsoft is the carrier. The simplest possible arrangement, bought as a licence.

◆Nothing to integrate at all
◆Least flexible on numbers, rates and call bundles
◆Often the right start at smaller user counts
◆ The gap worth naming early: Teams has no native contact centre. If you run queues, an IVR or agents, a certified platform has to sit on top, and that deserves its own assessment rather than an assumption.
Planned, not discovered

What actually breaks, and what we plan for

None of these are exotic. All of them derail projects when they surface late.

◆ Analogue devices: lift phones, fire panels, security call points, EFTPOS lines and door intercoms. The single most common cause of a stalled migration, because nobody remembers them until cutover.
◆ Number porting: it runs on carrier timeframes, not yours. Ranges get split, some numbers sit behind old contracts, and a porting date is not a promise until it is confirmed.
◆ Call flow replication: nobody documented the current menus and the person who built them has left. We map what happens today before anyone builds the replacement.
◆ The PSTN switch-off: if a site still runs ISDN or copper, the decision has a deadline attached whether you like it or not.
◆ Emergency calling: the address a cloud platform hands to emergency services is a configuration choice, not a fact. It needs setting per site, and checking.
◆ What happens when the internet drops: mobile failover, call forwarding and local survivability are three different answers at three different prices.
Who plays here

Platforms we assess for this

Each has its own page, with the same honest fit guidance.

Common questions

Asked on most of these projects

Yes, if you agree to do the implementation with us, we will assist end to end. This includes porting, call-flow replication, admin and user trainings, parallel testing and a soft go-live with rollback, so cutover day is uneventful by design.

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Independent · Vendor-agnostic
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Independent · Vendor-agnostic

Independent advice for cloud communications

UCaaS and CCaaS consulting and brokerage for organisations across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Singapore. One partner on your side of the table.

Meet with us See how we work

Two models. One rule: the decision is always yours.

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Trusted across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom & Singapore

Some of the organisations we have helped modernise

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Bring the rest of the table

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How we work

Two ways to engage us, and how to pick between them

Brokerage, where we compare the market and negotiate on your behalf. Or consultancy, a structured engagement with defined deliverables. Same independence, different shape. Start by picking the one that fits.

Brokerage

Guided end to end

Like a mortgage broker for cloud communications.

We shortlist the platforms that genuinely fit, sit on your side of the table through demos and negotiation, and you sign directly with the vendor you choose.

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Meet with us

Consultancy

Scoped deliverables

A structured engagement, scoped by deliverables.

Structured RFP packages with requirements matrices, weighted scorecards and comparable pricing templates. The final vendor recommendation is formally out of scope, so your process stays clean.

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Request a proposal

Five steps, built for scrutiny

Built for probity, tender rules and board scrutiny. We prepare the process and the evidence. You make the call.

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Six stages, from first workshop to business as usual

You sign directly with the vendor you choose, and we stay on the account after go-live.

◆You sign with the vendor you chose
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Request a proposal Book a scoping call

The benchmarking promise

If your current setup is right, our benchmark will say so, and that is the recommendation you will get.

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Project management

The team that ran your selection runs your rollout

We are a certified implementation partner. A named project manager, a fixed cost with no cap on hours, an Australian-based project team, and a go-live you can roll back.

Request an implementation scope How we work
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Phase Tasks Your time

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Handsets arrive plug and play. If you need someone on site to plug in test phones, we can arrange a local resource and scope it separately.

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Target resolution times, unified communications

Level Severity Description Target
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Contact centre platforms run to a separate 24/7/365 schedule with response times from one hour. Escalations to the vendor follow our partner escalation process.

Tell us what you are migrating, and we will scope it.

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Request an implementation scope

Vendors

We broker a handful. We assess the whole market.

As brokers we partner with RingCentral, Zoom, Dialpad, GoTo and 8x8. As consultants we assess the whole market.

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Related case study

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In practice

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Meet with us

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More case studies
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Your project next

Every one of these started with a conversation

Tell us what you are running and what is not working. We will tell you what we would look at first, and whether we are the right people for it.

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How this one ran

◆Requirements gathered from the people who use the phones
◆Vendors scored against those requirements, on the record
◆Rollout project-managed by our own team
◆Same people still on the account after go-live

About

Independent from the first day

TelcoDataCloud was founded in Adelaide in 2017 to give organisations something the market did not offer: whole-of-market advice on cloud communications from people who do not hold the contract.

Our story

Founded in Adelaide, 2017

Asa Grund started TelcoDataCloud after years on the vendor side of the table, watching organisations pick communications platforms with almost no independent help. The vendors had specialists. The customers had a brochure.

The model has not changed since. We gather the requirements, compare the market, negotiate the commercial detail and project-manage the migration. You sign directly with the vendor you choose, and we are still on the account long after go-live.

Today the team works across almost every sector, from super funds, school networks and councils to retailers, manufacturers, health services, professional services, sporting clubs, tourism operators and charities, in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Singapore. If an organisation runs phones, we have probably run the project.

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Meet with us See how we work
Solutions

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Customers

The decision stays yours. The legwork is ours

Super funds, school networks, councils, retailers and charities. We gather the requirements, build the shortlist and manage the migration. You choose the platform.

Featured case study · Education

Catholic Education Diocese of Cairns

1,400 extensions across 28 schools in six months

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Challenge

The diocese needed to modernise telephony across a network of 30 schools. Requirements sat with school leaders and administrators spread right across the diocese, and replacing handsets at that scale put real pressure on capital budget.

Approach

Educational workshops with stakeholders across the diocese, then detailed requirements gathering. Six vendors were shortlisted and assessed through a weighted scoring model, with TelcoDataCloud supporting the diocese throughout its evaluation. Handsets were leased rather than bought.

Result

1,400 extensions deployed across 28 of the 30 schools in six months. 1,100 leased handsets in service with no capital expense. One partner from the first workshop through to business as usual.

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Trusted across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom & Singapore

Some of the organisations we have helped modernise

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Let’s meet

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Independent advice, whichever way this goes. If your current setup is right, our benchmark will say so.
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