More Topics
Paid Content : This paid content was written and produced by RV Studios of Red Ventures' marketing unit in collaboration with the sponsor and is not part of ZDNET's Editorial Content.

​Telstra Calling for Office 365: Next level collaboration that's here right now

An Australian first, Telstra and Microsoft have come together to combine two traditionally separate tools -- PSTN phone calls and Office 365 cloud apps.

At Telstra we have worked with Microsoft so organisations can now get our leading voice calling within Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business, delivered from the Microsoft cloud. This solution is Telstra Calling for Office 365 and it's officially available today.

Since unveiling the solution, over 200 organisations have participated in a preview program with 30 trialing the solution. They included the likes of Peet, RM Williams, Downer Group, and public sector organisations such as the Supreme Court of Victoria and City of Fremantle in Western Australia. A selected list of business partners were also handpicked and accredited to resell and deploy relevant services.

With the strong rise of mobile and cloud services, more and more businesses are looking for ways to mobilise employees and digitise how they communicate with each other. We are seeing a big push from major changes in market landscape, from ISDN migration to digital transformation, and a need for flexible working practices.

There is no better time than now to start driving change in businesses, and Telstra Calling for Office 365 certainly steers in the right direction by enabling people through collaboration tools. Now there are more ways than ever before to communicate. Despite the decline of legacy PSTN systems,voice remains a constant in how people connect with each other.

That's why we've worked with Microsoft to bring to market a solution that lets businesses easily and securely access both cloud collaboration and voice infrastructure services. Now customers can get one seamless collaboration experience because of the ability to layer other capabilities on top of enterprise calling. For example, this might be multi-person video, screen sharing, document sharing, and co-editing.

With this solution, businesses can foster flexible working cultures. This even helps with talent retention, because people are happier when they have the right tools that just work -- where they want them. In this way, Telstra Calling for Office 365 does go beyond just voice.

The evolution of the Australian way of doing business

Telstra and Microsoft believe that unifying voice calling and existing productivity software will help enhance the efficiency with which people work.

We trialed the solution with early adopter City of Fremantle and they're already seeing results, their IT manager, Joel Hurst, said.

"Our future is fully digital, fully mobile, activity-based working. We want staff to be empowered to work anywhere, anytime, from any device. Telstra Calling for Office 365 made sense to us. We can reduce our office footprint. Our staff feel included," he said.

"Moving over to Telstra was really simple. Set up was easier than anticipated. We were up and running within a day."

For organisations that already have a significant investment in Microsoft Office 365, it is a logical step to integrate enterprise calling and create a modern collaboration experience.

There's a big difference between picking up the phone so you can give someone a call -- versus being able to do exactly that and more within your existing collaboration tools. Things are done faster and better. In an empowered and agile team, your users don't need to think about the technology that is there -- it just becomes so inherently part of what they do every day.

In an increasingly digital and mobile world, Telstra Calling for Office 365 will play an instrumental role in driving transformational change across businesses. Now is the time to start shaping your future workforce, where people are empowered to succeed.

Learn more about Telstra Calling for Office 365 here.

Editorial standards