Hundreds of millions of users rely on Microsoft Teams to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers. However, telephony limitations are perhaps the platform’s most pronounced shortcoming.

Voice calling was not a high priority when Teams was launched in 2016 — the platform was designed to support workplace collaboration with chat, video conferencing, file sharing and application integration features.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. businesses continue to rely on the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) that has been in general use since the late 1800s. In 2015, however, the Federal Communications Commission established guidelines that would allow carriers to phase out the PSTN and transition to digital-only networks.

Is your company hanging onto a legacy phone system in order to avoid the costs of an upgrade or a replacement? If so, you may not realize just how much that old phone system is really costing you.

If your phone system is more than 10 years old, your maintenance and infrastructure costs are likely increasing every year.

Millions of Americans each year experience workplace emergencies related to injury, illness or violence. Complex business communications systems can make it difficult to get a rapid response from police, fire or medical personnel, however.

The multiline telephone systems (MLTS) commonly used in commercial businesses, schools and government facilities deliver a number of operational and budget benefits, but they’ve always been problematic for 911 systems.

According to the State of Remote Work report from Buffer, 99 percent of workers would prefer to work remotely at least some of the time until they retire. That’s just about everybody. Another study from FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found that remote work increased by 44 percent in five years and more than 90 percent in 10 years.

According to IDC forecasts, the unified communications (UC) and collaboration market is expected to grow at rate of 7.1 percent through 2023, reaching $48.3 billion. IDC research analysts point out that the decision to migrate from legacy analog, digital and TDM voice platforms to Voice over IP (VoIP) and UC solutions is long overdue.

Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, ending months of speculation that it would take steps to reduce and restructure its $6.3 billion in debt. This move was followed by the sale of Avaya’s networking business to Extreme Networks for $100 million.

At the VMUG (VMware User Group) Usercon held on Nov. 2 in Orlando, Verteks President Don Gulling delivered a presentation on the use of VMware infrastructure to enhance resilience and redundancy for Voice over IP (VoIP) and unified communications (UC). By applying best practices, organizations can achieve “seven 9s” availability using ShoreTel Connect and VMware for fully virtualized voice, video, mobility, collaboration, unified messaging and contact center systems.