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- Hello everyone. I'm Brian Hyrek,
your VoIP expert here at VoIP supply.
And welcome to another episode of Sip chats.
Today we are featuring Mike O'Donnell from Venetto,
Mike and I have worked together over my past 15 years
here at VoIP supply very closely,
and we would love to highlight Mike O'Donnell
and his team over at Venetto.
Mike, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone
in Sip chats?
- Hi everyone, Mike O'Donnell from Veneto.
We are a full service voiceover IP provider
based out of Pennsylvania.
We serves customers all across the US
as well as internationally.
And we are a longstanding long-term Sangoma partner.
We support the full suite of Sangoma solutions.
I've been a long-term partner of VoIP supply as well.
And, you know,
we're a hundred percent focused on voiceover IP
and related voice applications,
whether it be cloud-based, on-prem, hybrid,
Sip trunking, hosting, or sort of middleware applications
that sort of connect users with these various applications,
whether it be CRM suites, et cetera.
So, I'm, you know,
happy to be here and happy to be talking to Brian
about various topics today.
- Mike, thanks for sitting down with us.
I know that primarily Venetto is a Sangoma partner.
Do you wanna speak a bit about that
and a bit about your solutions
and how you do help customers in the single acumen?
- Yeah, sure, absolutely.
So we have, we have different segments of customers.
We have the small and mid-sized customer,
they typically wants more of a turnkey,
hosted or on-prem type solution.
So we're able to do that through whether it be Switchbox
or PB exact
or Venetto does have our own platform
called E platform as well, where that's applicable,
which is Asterix based.
So just really depending on the needs of the client,
we can address those, those needs in more of a turnkey way.
We also have a division of our business
that gets involved with enterprise customers.
And that's more of where we're coming in to solve
specific problems that inner enterprise customers have.
So maybe they have different pieces
that they're comfortable with and they're supporting,
and they're able to manage themselves,
but they may be missing some help or maybe some advice
or different areas that they can't get to.
So such as hosting,
they have the application, they have the Sip trunking,
but they really need reliable cloud hosting.
And that's where one of our businesses at Venetto,
we can do that for them.
Another application could be they're using Microsoft teams
and they just deployed a large Switchbox let's say,
we're able to actually create a middleware,
which allows the integration between the Microsoft teams
and their Switchbox system,
so that they can use Microsoft teams as their Sip client
instead of a third party
and have their users benefit from a single sign on
that does everything,
but yet still get all the advantages from Switchbox.
So it's little applications like that,
that we tend to play in with some of the larger customers.
- That's great.
Sounds like you're kind of a one-stop shop then where,
you know,
even if they need help with their Switchbox being hosted,
or if they're looking at a whole new PBX solution,
Venetto is really there to support you.
Mike, over the past year or so,
VoIP supplies really seen an uptick in Microsoft teams.
Does Venetto have any involvement in the team's project
ongoing
or any plays with Microsoft teams?
- Yeah, I mean, we, we definitely do.
We've been seeing an uptick,
I would say primarily there's been an enormous uptick
since the pandemic had started, you know,
where folks, where they had it on their radar,
but they weren't quite ready to do anything.
And I think what the pandemic did
was kind of shift that into gear.
And I think with the ability now,
or requirement that is of being on the work from anywhere,
you know, teams is becoming more part of the culture,
of not only the big enterprise customers,
but even the small customers.
We're seeing small customers running on Microsoft 365,
whatever the licensing may be.
And they're tryna figure out how do we allow
or enable those users,
whether it's a handful of users or hundreds of users
to use that interface as part of their phone system.
And I think what we're doing is spending a lot,
(audio disconnects)
really educating folks on the different options
they have available.
So you think about teams, everyone gets teams now,
and teams is great
because you can collaborate with your colleagues,
you can do peer to peer calling.
You can chat,
you can manage projects
and Microsoft is doing a great job.
I think, I think they actually got it right this time
where they're really adding good valuable capabilities.
And so what we're doing is we're helping them,
say all right, well, you're using teams all day long,
what if you can actually make teams your real phone,
not just to make internal calls, teams to teams,
but actually have that become your "Sip client".
Okay.
If we can have a way where we can connect
Microsoft with your phone system,
whether it be Sangomas, Switchbox
or PD exact,
or even our Asterix system, if we can have a way to do that,
then your teams users can take advantage
of all the capabilities of your PBX.
They can be extension calling between users on the PBX,
they could be part of call queues,
they could be of your ACD and IVRs,
they can have all those advantages
and one place that now they can live in all day long.
And so that's what we've been kinda helping clients do.
And the way we're able to do that is we have a gateway,
essentially, a session border control that,
that we host in our cloud
and our customers subscribed to it.
And that's how we create the connection
between the team's users and their PBX.
- That's great.
So I don't think the general public,
in general,
when we we've had a bunch of these deals together,
Mike, and in general, when I bring that up that, oh, no,
you can still integrate your existing PBX
or maybe you need to integrate
a Asterix based solution
to your Microsoft teams.
It's not generally aware that you can integrate the two.
What are you seeing most commonly used, I guess, with teams?
Is there a particular platform or is there a particular way
that people are integrating with teams?
- Yeah, so I mean,
what we're seeing in the market is,
I think there was a time where the question was,
am I gonna incorporate teams or not?
And I think that was a decision people were faced with,
you know, do I move to office 365?
Do I use teams for any part of my business?
Maybe I use it for chat or collaboration.
Now, I think we're seeing this shift where it becomes
so important for a lot of these customers,
that the question now is, well, how do I use the,
how do I use the communications piece of teams?
Okay. And there's a couple options.
The first option with teams,
you can do the peer-to-peer stuff.
So Brian,
if you and I were on teams and we're in the same company,
we can chat, I can call you peer to peer within teams.
We can collaborate, we can share documents,
we can do all those things, as part of the general license.
But the next question is,
if you and I are highly mobile
and we're on the road or we're wherever we're working
and we want the ability to talk to outside people.
Well, the next phase, if you will,
is to enable direct call routing.
Sangoma actually does a really good job with this,
with their voice innovations group,
where they provide a Sip trunk
and the ability for the team's client to make
and receive external calls.
So think of it as turning your team's account
into a business cell phone.
I mean, that's really what you're doing.
And the benefit is when you make an outbound call,
it's not your cell phone number,
it's your Sip trunk
that you can create an outbound caller ID of ABC company.
So it's still not integrated with the PBX,
but it gives you the next layer of capabilities.
And VoIP innovation is doing a great job with that.
So I encourage people if you're interested in that
as an option, contact VoIP supply,
to get a little more information on that,
the third phase is taking it a whole another level.
It's saying, okay, I have 50 people in my company.
And
20 people,
all they really wanna use is their teams account
to make internal calls,
to make external calls,
to receive inbound calls from a,
maybe a ring group or call queue,
they want that to become their desk phone.
That's where we come into play from Venetto.
We create this connectivity between Switchbox
or PB exact or Asterix,
and we allow that to connect
with your Microsoft teams users.
So they become extensions.
So in addition,
to be able to make internal and external calls,
they can now be part of all the goodness
that exists within the PBX
and all those advantages.
And that's, that's really the phase three,
and that's where we spend most of our time.
Now, do we work with every PBX out there?
No, we don't.
We, we primarily work with the Sangoma suite of PBX's
and platforms.
And Venetto also has our own platform as well
called E platform,
which is an enterprise platform,
enterprise features that we
integrate with as well.
And, and really what we look at is needs, drive,
which application or platform we typically recommend.
And we get involved a lot
where customers already have invested in Switchbox
or PB exact or some Asterix base platform,
and we're able to work with them to make that work.
So in some cases,
we're just strictly providing the integration.
And in other cases, we're,
we're more of a full service provider.
- Excellent.
So in going over those three phases and the multitudes
that people can actually utilize this interoperability,
really what VoIP supply wants to get across as well,
that in conjunction with our partners Venetto,
give us a call,
let's have the conversation
about how you would like to utilize teams
or what you're looking for from a business case.
And we can tell you
what teams can provide to help fulfill your solution.
Mike,
thank you soo much for spending time with us,
as always really appreciate
you taking the time out of your day.
I know you're a busy guy
and Venetto has been very busy over there,
so we appreciate it.
Is there anything else
that you'd like to share with our audience?
- No, I just don't, don't be shy.
I mean, it's,
it's one of those things where there are options that exist.
So, you know,
reach out to your representative at VoIP supply and,
you know, get,
get some information on what those options are and,
and what the pros and cons are.
So you can make the best decision for you,
that I appreciate your time.
- We appreciate you, Mike,
and to everyone who is watching or listening today,
thank you soo much.
We really appreciate your views.
If you did enjoy it, please click like or subscribe.
We really appreciate that as well.
And we'd like to keep the Sip chats rolling,
but until next time and as always,
thank you for joining Sip chats.
Cheers.
(phone ringing)
(water pouring)
(Sipping)