An Unfiltered Guide to 2021 UCaaS + Business VOIP Providers

2020 was the year for VOIP systems. No wait, 2020 was the year for cloud-hosted VOIP systems.  Actually, let’s be clear, 2020 was the year that we started hearing everyone stop using the terms VOIP and cloud-hosted VOIP and really pick up the terms Unified Communications (UC) and Collaboration.

With organizations being forced to adopt a remote workforce in 2020 due to COVID-19, the Unified Communications & Collaboration market grew 25.1% from 2019 as of October 2020 (according to the  IDC).  However, 2021 doesn’t feel much different and most companies are realizing that remote work is here to stay.

 
 


Intro to UCaaS Vocabulary

To know how we got here, watch the above 2 minute video on the transformation from analog PBX phone systems to UCaaS. Now, let’s define a few random terms that are thrown around.

  • VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) – Phone calls going out over an internet circuit

  • PRI (Primary Rate Interface) – Traditional groups (24) copper lines required for phone calls to be made

  • SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) – Newer protocol that can transmit phone calls along with data (such as text messaging, etc.) and replaced the need for traditional dedicated telephone circuits

  • POTS / Analog / Landline – Copper phone line (Old school)

  • PBX (Public Branch Exchange) – Name for a phone system

  • PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) – How a phone call gets out to the world

  • Non-Fixed and Fixed VOIP 

    • Non-Fixed - Phone Numbers not attached to a physical location

    • Fixed – Phone Numbers attached to a physical location

  • UCaaS and CCaas

    • UCaaS – Unified Communications as a Service

    • CCaaS – Contact Center as a Service

  • On-Prem – Refers to a phone system hosted on premise (typically in a data center)  

  • Cloud Hosted – Outsourced infrastructure typically stored in another service providers facility

  • Session Border Controller (SBC) – Appliance providing additional security and regulation to IP Communication flows


The Trouble with Traditional Phone Systems

Traditionally, for an on-premise PBX (or phone system), organizations had to purchase the physical phone equipment then host the equipment in a data center they operated or leased from a service provider.   In addition, organizations typically paid expensive maintenance contracts on the hardware, monthly bills for PRI/POTS lines plus the long minute charges and, in many cases, paid a monthly management fee to maintain the system (patching, user changes, system changes, etc.).   The setup of the phone system was cumbersome and complicated and to make a configuration change (such as changing a hunt group or call route) required advanced development which many organizations had to pay a third party for.

In addition, if your organization had multiple locations, this process had to be repeated at every location you wanted a phone call to be taken. This caused the systems to be costly to purchase, maintain and operate and laborious for an organization to deal with.

Remote Workers & a New Type of Phone System

Cloud Based VOIP services use internet circuits to route calls out to the PSTN so you no longer need the physical PBX hardware and circuits to make a phone call, you just need internet access.  This removes much of the cost, time and effort organizations previously spent.  

As described above, the reality in 2021 is that every individual in an organization may be working at a separate location.  In a traditional system, this would cause challenges because phone traffic would be totally unmonitored in a home office or would have to traverse back to the office or data center the PBX equipment is being hosted causing latency.  Now, users can create fixed and non-fixed VOIP numbers that allow a user to connect to their home internet and dial directly from there with the location being fluidly updated based on the organizational preference.

You can continue listing the reasons, but it reduces the costs, time and effort of managing and maintaining a phone system and provides more features and flexibility than before.

Comparing business VOIP Providers

There are hundreds of providers out there, but we will highlight a few of what we think are the best VOIP service providers and how they are different.  We have broken them into groups based on the architecture and market targets.  Additionally, we have included how they connect to Microsoft Teams because of the surging popularity of Microsoft 365 through 2020.  

There four types of connections we list defined best by Avant Communications:

Direct Routing: Supplier-hosted/managed SBC connects PSTN service to Microsoft Cloud Phone System. Requires MSFT Cloud Phone System license + supplier calling SKU. 

Bundled PBX: Supplier bundles proprietary PBX into offering. This augments Teams with features like PSTN call recording and analytics. Requires MSFT Cloud Phone System license + UCaaS seat 

Embedded Dialer: Supplier soft phone functions as application/widget within Teams interface. Doesn't require MSFT Cloud Phone System license 

3rd-Party SBC: uses middleware and outsourced SBCs to embed PSTN dialing capabilities into Teams client. Supplier bundles proprietary PBX into offering. This augments Teams with features like PSTN call recording and analytics. Requires MSFT Cloud Phone System license + UCaaS seat + 3rd Party SBC license

Let’s get into the providers.

Proprietary voip technology without Proprietary Contact Center solution

These providers have their own proprietary Cloud Hosted VOIP system and will partner with a top ranked CCaaS provider to deliver you an advanced all in one solution with contact center all under one system:

RingCentral / Avaya Cloud Office

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking: Leader (Both)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Partners with NICEinContact

  • Users: +2 million  

  • Our Thoughts: Very popular system that is used at all organization sizes from SMB to Enterprise.  RingCentral has been around for a long time and the product is solid across the board.  Many customers feel it has one of the cleanest interfaces in the market and the ease of learning to operate the system is simple.  Additionally, in 2019, RingCentral and Avaya built a partnership for Avaya to sell it’s cloud office solution rebranded as Avaya Cloud Office (which is RingCentral) giving legacy Avaya users a simple way to transition to the cloud. 

  • Concerns: Because of their size, support can be challenging for a smaller customer. 

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC or Embedded Dialer

LogMeIn

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Challenger (Gartner)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Partners with NICEinContact

  • Users: +500,000  

  • Our Thoughts: LogMeIn acquired Jive and connected the Jive platform with the GoToConnect video platform which is very popular.  Very popular in the education and public sector space and gaining popularity because of their other products altogether under one roof.  Under LogMeIn, an organization can utilize them for Phones (Jive), Video (GoToMeeting/GoToConnect), Contact Center, Password Management (LastPass), Patch Management (Central), Remote Desktop (GoToMyPC). 

  • Concerns: So many acquired brands under one provider, sometimes it is confusing to the customer since the systems have multiple names.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC or Embedded Dialer

Fuze VOIP

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Visionaries (Gartner) / Leaders (Forrester)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Partners with NICEinContact and Five9

  • Users: +500,000  

  • Our Thoughts: Fuze has had a major focus on the enterprise space and has been very competitive with the more traditional brands.  Customer service seems to be a strength for Fuze.

  • Concerns: Not as focused on the SMB space, so not as good of a fit for a smaller organization. 

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC or Embedded Dialer 

Zoom

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Leader (Gartner) 

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Partners with Five9, Genesys, Talkdesk and Twilio

  • Users: +40 Million  

  • Our Thoughts: Zoom has been the monster in the video meeting space for years, but more recently launched their cloud hosted VOIP solution into the market.  They will have a lot of wins because the popularity of the video platform and they are quickly building features into the product to become a mainstream competitor.

  • Concerns: Late to the game, so much of the functionality is still being developed. 

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC

Proprietary Standalone business VOIP and Proprietary Contact Center

These providers have both a proprietary Cloud Hosted VOIP service and contact center solution in house.  

8x8 VOIP

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Leaders (Gartner) / Strong Peformers (Forrester)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Proprietary

  • Users: +1 Million  

  • Our Thoughts: 8x8 has grown extremely fast over the last five years and has emerged as one of the toughest competitors in the space.  With everything developed and built in house, their claim to fame is they can quickly make changes for a customer.  A unique licensing structure also allows an organization to mix and match licensing throughout an organization. 

  • Concerns: While the mixed licensing is a strength, it can also be considered a challenge as well to understand.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC 

Vonage VOIP

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Niche (Gartner) / Contenders (Forrester)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Proprietary

  • Users: +750,000  

  • Our Thoughts: Vonage is one of the most well known brands in the space as they transitioned from residential VOIP to Business Cloud Based VOIP over the years. Feature rich and cost competitive solution and has unique licensing models to adapt to an organization needs.  If Salesforce is an important integration, Vonage becomes a leader as it has built many of the functionalities native into Salesforce.

  • Concerns: Because of the switch from residential VOIP to business phone solution, some customers associate Vonage with a low cost alternative.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC 

Mitel

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking: Challengers (Both)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Proprietary

  • Users: +1.5 Million  

  • Our Thoughts: Mitel has consistently been a strong player in the cloud based VOIP industry as it was strong in the on prem VOIP space with Shoretel and Mitel previously.  Mitel has a large base of customers that have been using Mitel for years and continues to support the brand as they convert customers to a Cloud Hosted VOIP solution.

  • Concerns: Still have a number of customers in the traditional on-premise VOIP solutions and some have challenged their innovations and progress in comparison to a number of the other newer systems.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC 

Cisco VOIP (sold through Nextiva, CBTS, EvolveIP, Masergy, Momentum, Intrado, Calltower, etc.)

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Leader (Both)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Proprietary

  • Users: +50 Million

  • Our Thoughts: Cisco is still the gorilla in this space.  In 2018, they purchased Broadsoft which was the top cloud hosted phone solution in the space at the time.  Cisco is always going to have a lot of fans because of how embedded they are in the networking and telecom space and they have always had quality products.  The providers listed can deliver an organization a Cisco Cloud Hosted VOIP solution without the hassle of managing it, which has helped Cisco continue to grow this space.

  • Concerns: Cisco is always expensive and can be cumbersome to managed.  This is solved by having someone host and manage the systems for you, but if you choose to do this yourself or co-manage, this can become time consuming. 

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing, Bundled PBX or Embedded Dialer 

Dialpad

  • Gartner Ranking / Forrester Ranking:  Niche (Gartner) / Challengers (Forrester)

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Proprietary

  • Users: Not disclosed

  • Our Thoughts: Dialpad is a new challenger in the space and has focused on Google organizations and heavy sales organizations.  Dialpad is incorporating heavy AI with their basic seats to predict call satisfaction, potential escalations, competitor conversations, etc.  As of the time of this post, Dialpad is being considered predominantly from early technology adopters, but we expect them to continue to get a lot more traction (or acquired) in the coming years.

  • Concerns: Because they are so new, there are some concerns that their features are continuously rolling out.  Additionally, a more traditional hard phone user organization, doesn’t always see the value.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: 3rd Party SBC 

Avaya (see RingCentral above)

  • This is a unique one, so we will list it here as well.  Avaya has formed a partnership to deliver their Avaya Cloud Office product which is rebranded RingCentral to the end users.  However, Avaya still has their on premise VOIP and contact center solutions which is why we list them here.

Microsoft Teams Phone Systems

Yes, we are creating our own category for this because Microsoft Teams now has over 115 Million users as of the time of this post.  Organizations are continuously trying to use the Microsoft platform more and the next evolution is to build the phone functionality into Microsoft teams as much as possible.  

As great as Microsoft Teams is, there are still many features and functionalities that it lacks to be a full phone solution and so typically an 3rd Party Provider is needed to help enable the use of Microsoft Teams as phone system.  It should be noted that all of the providers listed above in the previous two sections have built integrations for Microsoft Teams as well and closing the gap between the native experience and not.  However, for the sake of this post, we will separate them out.  

In this section, we will also remove the Gartner Ranking because Microsoft Teams is what we are discussing which both Gartner and Forrester have considered to be a Leader.

Calltower

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Clarity Connect, Five9 and CT Cloud Contact Center

  • Users: +400,000

  • Our Thoughts: Calltower has made a niche in this space being one of the first Microsoft Native Teams Phone systems out there.  Calltower is cost competitive and can help an organization enable their Microsoft Teams platform as a phone system easily.  

  • Concerns: Very reliant on Microsoft licensing in order to connect to enable phone system.

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing or Bundled PBX

EvolveIP

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Cisco Broadsoft or Proprietary

  • Users: +400,000

  • Our Thoughts: EvolveIP is a unique option around Microsoft Teams because they can deliver Teams natively with a backup PBX system in the case Microsoft has an outage.  EvolveIP can also deliver their own proprietary contact center solution which Microsoft does not have a solution for.  Can also deliver SD-WAN to improve voice quality and work well with users who are considering VDI/DaaS as they provide DaaS in house and can work with customers on the unique requirements. 

  • Concerns: Not many concerns except some customers will compare direct routing (which is just call plans) to a bundled PBX which gives more redundancy.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing or Bundled PBX

CBTS

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Cisco Broadsoft, Webex or UCCE

  • Users: +300,000

  • Our Thoughts: CBTS has won Cisco Partner of the Year award on a few occasions and focuses solely on Cisco and now Microsoft.  In depth knowledge of the Cisco platform and can provide both the direct routing and bundled PBX for organizations that like Cisco, but also want to utilize Microsoft Teams.  Can also provide SD-WAN to improve quality.

  • Concerns: Because Cisco is inherently expensive, CBTS can sometimes be more expensive if not comparing apples to apples  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing, Bundled PBX or Embedded Dialer

Momentum Telecom

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): NICEinContact or Talkdesk

  • Users: +500,000

  • Our Thoughts: Momentum is known for their white glove on site implementations (over a certain size) and does a great job ensuring the system is configured correctly in the beginning.  Can also provide SD-WAN to improve quality and aggregate circuits globally as well.

  • Concerns: Because Cisco is inherently expensive, CBTS can sometimes be more expensive if not comparing apples to apples  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing or Bundled PBX

Masergy

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Cisco

  • Users: +500,000

  • Our Thoughts: Masergy is a unique player in this space with a large global footprint and a hands-on service-first approach.  Masergy carries a Net Promoter Score in the 70s which speaks volume to their customer service and SLAs. Additionally, because Masergy can alleviate many of the pains of a large ISP by providing circuits, SIP, SD-WAN, Security and Voice, if they can provide the network with voice, they will promise a 100% SLA on voice uptime. 

  • Concerns: They do focus on larger voice opportunities unless the full WAN is being included as well.  

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing or Embedded Dialer

Intrado

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Cisco and Genesys

  • Users: +600,000

  • Our Thoughts: Intrado has been in this space for a long time as WestIP, etc.  They have been a Cisco partner for years and have built up a large following over the years as they have a niche in handling the majority the 911 dialing for American Telephone Numbers taking over 290 Million 911 calls in 2017.  Very competitive in their pricing of the call plans and lots of experience with the Cisco and Genesys call centers.

  • Concerns: They have always been viewed as a Cisco provider which has created a few name changes, hence, Intrado.   

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing

NTT Arkadin

  • Contact Center (CCaaS): Anywhere 365

  • Users: +4 Million

  • Our Thoughts: NTT Arkadin is a part of the larger global empire of NTT.  In 2019, they won the Microsoft Intelligent Communications Part of the Year award and Cisco Innovation Partner of the Year award.  They have a large global footprint with 19 global support languages supported.  Additionally, with the Anywhere 365 Contact Center solution, they also have a huge advantage for those organizations wanting to go “all in” on Microsoft.

  • Concerns: Although NTT Arkadin is part of the larger NTT, that can also be a weakness because they are such a large organization.   

  • Connects to Microsoft teams: Direct Routing, Bundled PBX

Other Options

We are not going to list these out in details like we have above, however, there are also two other groups of providers that are worth noting when considering Cloud Hosted VOIP options. 

Internet Service Provider Systems

Most major carriers also sell a white labeled or ISP packaged solution that you can also consider for your business VOIP solution.  This comes with the pros and cons of the system they are using along with the challenges some face when dealing with their ISPs.  However, the following national ISPs are worth noting with their solutions as well:

  • Verizon VOIP - Cisco

  • Windstream – Avaya, Broadview, Mitel

  • AT&T – RingCentral, Cisco

  • Lumen – Cisco, Zoom

  • Spectrum VOIP – Cisco

  • Comcast VOIP – Cisco, Blueface (new)

Session Border Controllers (SBCs)

We are including this section because with the growth of Microsoft Teams, this topic can be confusing as it doesn’t specifically fall into the VOIP conversation so neatly.  If you review how you can connect Microsoft Teams as a Phone System, this will explain more about the SBCs. 

However, in short, if you have an existing phone system and you have SIP and you would like to connect Microsoft Teams to the PSTN on your own, you can do this with Session Border Controllers.  These can be delivered in a managed or unmanaged solution to connect to the PSTN.  We will warn ahead of time that an organization should ensure they have experience telecom personnel supporting the setup and ongoing management of an SBC.  Otherwise, there are numerous companies out there that can help deliver and manage these SBCs so that they are done correctly.

Here are a few of the SBC providers we’ve worked with:

  • Avaya

  • Audicodes

  • Ribbon

  • Cisco 

  • Patton

  • Metaswitch

Ready to Decide on a VOIP Service Provider?

No matter the provider above, we constantly see these cloud VOIP service providers compared against the traditional on premise PBX and VOIP systems. The traditional systems rarely win due to the ongoing ROI, increased functionality and ease of use when compared to more comprehensive UCaaS solutions.

Opkalla is here to help with this analysis and provide pricing for these options or discuss (at no cost) how your organization can deploy a unified communications system.  We do the research and leg work, so you don’t have to. 

Connect with us today - we’d love to help.

Cloud Contact Center, UCaaSAaron Bock