Ribbon Communications Inc., a global provider of secure and intelligent cloud communications, announced that its Session Border Controller (SBC) portfolio has been certified with Microsoft Teams and is now available in a new offering, Microsoft Direct Routing for Teams.

The solution provides secure, integrated voice services to Teams collaboration environments. Ribbon was one of only two suppliers officially certified by Microsoft to integrate its Session Border Controllers with Teams.

Teams is the hub for teamwork in Microsoft Office 365 that allows users to easily chat, share files, data and conduct meetings online to improve productivity. Previously external calling was only available from Microsoft’s Calling Plans for Phone Systems in select markets.

Ribbon’s SBC portfolio enables Microsoft customers to now also leverage their TDM or SIP Trunks for PSTN and PBX voice calling in the Teams client interface natively. This capability allows customers to globally adopt Teams as their modern workspace collaboration tool, while seamlessly integrating voice services.

“We want to make the workplace collaboration and communications experience as feature-rich and easily accessible as possible,” said Nikolay Muravlyannikov, senior program manager for Microsoft.

“Direct Routing for Teams enables us to provide our customers with the ability to intuitively integrate high quality voice services in their Teams environment anywhere in the world, creating an even more powerful workplace productivity, collaboration and communications tool.”

“We are pleased to be a longstanding, key partner delivering best-in-class voice services via the newly available Microsoft Direct Routing for Teams,” said Kevin Isacks, vice president of Software as a Service Solutions for Ribbon Communications. “Now Microsoft customers all over the world can enjoy enhanced voice and collaboration capabilities leveraging advanced feature functionality such as skills-based routing, regardless of whether they are using IP or analog-based connectivity.”

“NuWave is excited to work closely with Ribbon to deliver our customers advanced voice services to Teams’ already rich collaboration capabilities,” said Mark Bunnell, COO at NuWave. “NuWave’s PSTN calling service leverages Ribbon’s family of next-generation session border controllers to provide robust security, simplified interoperability, advanced session management, and enterprise-grade reliability. Our carrier-grade network provides optimal uptime and reliability backed by 24-hour support and geo-redundant datacentres.”

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