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Tom Arbuthnot is co-founder of Empowering.Cloud, a Microsoft Teams Industry Professionals Community., who also offer enablement programs for enterprises and Microsoft partners.

Tom hosted Dubber’s recent webinar about the opportunities to add services and revenue around Microsoft Teams Operator Connect. The panel included Timoor Husain of Microsoft, Mark Bunnell of Nuwave and Adrian di Pietrantonio of Dubber.

This blog summarises some of the key takeaways. To check out the entire webinar please click here.

Microsoft is scaling and simplifying PSTN connectivity for the customer and the service provider

Microsoft Teams Operator Connect has been in the market for over a year, and progress and adoption have been good. There are 43 Operator Connect service providers, and many more are coming. In this model, the operator is directly connected to Microsoft, which makes it very simple for the operator and customer to provision phone numbers.

Microsoft has been bringing telephony to their Unified Communications proposition for over 14 years. Traditionally, this involved customers deploying and managing their own session border controller infrastructure and connecting to the service provider with SIP trunks. This traditional model was quite complex, requiring a lot of infrastructure and professional services.

Operator Connect offers a much simpler model, which goes some way to explaining the quick uptake and adoption by Service. It sits alongside Microsoft’s Calling plans and Direct Routing as one of four options for PSTN connectivity for Teams users.

Teams Phone Mobile is the latest connectivity option to hit the market from Microsoft, running on the back of the operator connect platform. It will offer the new ability to be a single mobile/cell number for your mobile and Teams. One of the benefits is that a single Teams-certified recording platform like Dubber can record and capture both the Teams and the mobile calls.

Combined, these four options give customers the  choice to pick the combination that is right for them and personalise their experience of MS Teams. This level of choice also increases competition in the service provider market.

Customers want to reduce infrastructure and reduce costs

Customers are rapidly moving to Cloud Telephony platforms like Teams Phone. They are moving away from complex on-premises infrastructure, such as local SBCs, in favour of scalable cloud services.

I observed that with the acceleration of Microsoft Teams Phone, customers are often taking the opportunity to reassess their PSTN service provider choice and are looking to optimise spending and ROI on tech investment.

There is an increasing demand for self-service solutions. Mark Bunnell, COO Nuwave, noted 70% of Nuwave’s customers are moving to self-service cloud management.

There is no doubt that while Teams Phone is a rapidly growing market, there is competitive and margin pressure on service providers. Microsoft expects more providers to join Operator Connect in the future. With over 53% of organisations already choosing teams over other communication tools.

There are opportunities to add value and revenue with additional services customers need

While there is pressure on the minutes business, and it is getting somewhat commoditised, some great opportunities exist to differentiate and add value. Microsoft Teams is an ecosystem solution, meaning you need many components from different Microsoft partners to complete the customer solution. These include PSTN connectivity, recording, contact centre, eCDN, reporting and devices.

Service providers are in a great position to build out their offering with telco-related services like recording, business insights, compliance and contact centre. Differentiating services in this way empowers customers to unlock the value ‘in’ the network, improve stickiness and boost revenue.

Timoor Husain, Microsoft, noted the opportunity to offer the even fuller Microsoft 365 stack as an operator as a true managed service.

Mark also pointed out that there is still a lot of complexity in enterprise telephony and that does provide opportunities.

Operator Connect Accelerators like Nuwave can increase speed to  market and allow you to add additional services

Nuwave offers service providers a platform you can integrate to quickly get onto Operator Connect and give your customers a full self-service experience. They are one of Microsoft’s certified Operator Connect Accelerator partners.

Beyond Operator Connect, Nuwave has already integrated with Dubber and can add additional revenue-generating services for your customers, such as Contact Center and Dubber recording. All from a single platform.

If service providers prefer, they can also integrate Dubber directly into their service provider network.

With Dubber, you can offer recording and data insights for traditional PSTN calls and all Teams’ VoIP calls and meetings

Dubbers’ platform is specifically for service providers. Adrian di Pietrantonio noted Dubber works with over 175 providers.

Dubber allows operators to offer cloud-based Teams certified recording for customers for compliance and productivity improvements. Beyond compliance, increasingly required by customers in all markets, customers and providers are leveraging recording data and offering new value-added services. With Dubber, recording can be extended beyond just the PSTN calls into the customers’ Teams’ VoIP calls and meetings, which is essential for complete customer coverage.

To dive into the detail around these points, you can check out the full webinar on-demand

In July of 2022, NUWAVE became Dubber’s first Operator Connect Foundation Partner. This strategic partnership decision was pivotal for both companies as the need to scale Dubber’s technology quickly and globally became a top priority.

With Dubber’s Unified Conversational Recording (UCR) capabilities integrated into iPILOT and available to all NUWAVE customers as an entry-level solution at no cost, NUWAVE deploys the Dubber platform with instantly automatic provisioning.

NUWAVE and its partners can then choose to work with Dubber to introduce customers to richer and more comprehensive conversational recording and AI solutions to address a broad range of business needs by unlocking valuable information and insights from conversations across their voice and video calls.

“Optus is a challenger brand”, says Catherine Yue, Senior Director of Mobile for Optus Enterprise and Business. “We’re not the incumbent and we are in a quite different place in the market. We need to do things differently. For us that means looking for products and services we can use to delight and inspire our customers. Things like Dubber.”

Yue says her team looks for propositions which can improve the customer experience and the employee experience for Optus’ enterprise and SMB customers. “Dubber is very much focused on both, you can see it from a management perspective and an employee perspective. It answers their need to collect better insights and improve what they are doing and that means that in turn it helps them improve their customers’ experience.”

Delighting the customer cuts to the core of Optus’ philosophy. Yue says it’s what sits at the core of mobility and how Optus aims to carve out a greater share of the B2B mobility market. It’s not only enterprise and business customers. She says: “I look at what my colleagues are doing on the consumer and prepaid markets and it’s much the same. When you’re a challenger brand you have to find different focus areas.”

Optus was first introduced to Dubber when the company’s financial services team needed to find tools that could help customers deal with compliance requirements. Dubber ticked that box. Then, Yue says; “Once we double clicked on it and saw what it could do, we realised Dubber was much larger than financial services. We talked to our customers and quickly found there are so many other use cases. It could be in retail, legal, entertainment or in healthcare. We found there is so much that our customers can do with it.”

While Dubber has the ability to drive new revenue streams for a carrier like Optus, Yue says it makes for stickier customers. “Of course we want to increase the revenue from our customer base, but we can only do that if we have a proposition which resonates with customers and adds value. We want to offer them something that’s compelling and relevant.”

It’s still early days for Optus Enterprise and Business and Dubber, yet Yue says her team are already having conversations with customers about empowering their people to elevate their work to another level. It’s no longer just about a mobile device and voice, it’s about what else can be done.

Because Dubber is native on the Optus network, Yue says it makes it simpler for customers. She says: “It’s not like you have to go through an app or anything else, you actually just make a call and it records. There’s no additional action.”

For Yue and Optus, being able to partner with technology providers like Dubber is central. “Our portfolio is stronger because of our partnership. Dubber’s experience globally and the technical resource compliments us as a carrier. The partnership with the sales and marketing teams is also valuable. We can deliver a much stronger proposition because we partner.”

• ZIRO and Dubber sign Foundation Agreement enabling every customer to turn calls into AI driven notes and productivity outcomes for MS Teams
• Launch of Revolutionary out-of-box productivity for MS Teams, with ZIRO embedding Dubber Moments subscription as a standard feature for every user
• ZIRO and Dubber collaborate on growth, upsell to Dubber Notes for MS Teams
• ZIRO launching Dubber Moments and Dubber Notes for MS Teams launching January 2023

Melbourne, Australia, LONDON, DALLAS – 7 December 2022 — Dubber Corporation Limited (ASX: DUB), the leading conversational intelligence and unified recording platform for service providers and their customers globally, announced it has signed a Foundation Partner agreement with ZIRO, based in South Denver, Colorado, servicing customers in Canada and the United States. The partnership agreement encompasses a range of Dubber’s products, as well as newly released Dubber Moments and Dubber Notes for MS Teams. ZIRO will be launching the relationship to their customers in January 2023 with Dubber supporting their growth via the Dubber Foundation program.

ZIRO is focused on delivering increased value to their end users. By embedding Dubber Moments within all MS Teams subscriptions provided by ZIRO, their end users get an out-of-the-box productivity feature, with outstanding user experience, differentiated from other providers and powered by Dubber.

Dubber Moments users have the option to upgrade with a click to the fully featured Dubber Notes for MS Teams subscription, which provides a complete automation of meeting and call note taking including AI features such as auto actions items, sections of conversations, speakers, topics and Dubber Moments. Via a collaborative process between Dubber and ZIRO through various channel marketing activities, users will be shown the benefits of upgrading to Dubber Notes for MS Teams.

Dubber’s Unified Recording and Unified Recording + Insight suite of packages will also be available via ZIRO.

Steven Karachinsky, CEO, ZIRO:

“We’re thrilled to partner with Dubber because they share our passion for innovation and no-hassle values. They take recording to a whole new level by making it accurate, compliant, and actionable. That speaks volumes to us and to our customers, especially those in healthcare and financial institutions. How many times have we sat in meetings and either forgotten to take notes or dreaded making sense of a native app’s transcription? With Dubber, those days are over.

“We look forward to working with Dubber and to continue providing more value to customers by making UC easier than ever.”

Steve McGovern, CEO, Dubber:

“We’re really pleased to be launching a ‘Notes’ based Foundation program with ZIRO which will enable a fantastic user experience for their customers. ZIRO’s passion for innovation and market leading features for their Unified Communications services fits perfectly with the aspirations of Dubber’s ground-breaking platform. Customers can put away their pen and paper and enjoy AI driven note taking as a source of information and productivity without having to rely on ‘whole of conversation’ transcription.

“We look forward to working with ZIRO to help them capitalize on their differentiated product offering to continually deliver more outcomes for more customers, turning UC into an increasingly valuable tool at the core of everyday life and business workflows.”

Background:

The Dubber Foundation program is a solution and engagement model which sees Dubber being made available for every user opening up capabilities for differentiation at a Service Provider level.

With the Foundation program a Dubber product is embedded as a standard feature into every service to the end customer. The program then sees both Dubber and the Service Provider engage directly with the customer to introduce higher value products which provide benefits to the customer and drive accretive revenues, improved margin, differentiation and retention for the Service Provider.

About ZIRO:

ZIRO is the only solution provider making Unified Communications simple and easy. We help enterprise IT teams select, set up, and manage their phone, contact center, and meeting room tech with a partner they can trust. With over a decade of UC know-how, ZIRO is changing the status quo so companies can solve their biggest IT challenges without the hassle. For more information, visit https://goziro.com.

About Dubber:

Dubber enables Service Providers to unlock the potential of the network – turning every conversation into an exponential source of value for differentiated innovation, retention, and revenue. Listed on the ASX, Dubber is the clear market leader in conversational intelligence and unified recording – embedded at the heart of over 175 service provider networks.

For more information, please visit Dubber on www.dubber.net or contact:

Dubber Global Investors & Media
Terry Alberstein
terry@navigatecommunication.com.au
+61 (0) 458 484 921

Ziro Investors & Media
Achim Klor
aklor@goziro.com
+1 514-379-2128

We are pleased to announce that we have formally partnered with NTSCOM who is launching Dubber solutions through iPILOT across the United States!

NTSCOM is a Microsoft Operator Connect partner with 20+ years of experience in the carrier industry.  Together with NUWAVE’s iPILOT, NTSCOM automates both Direct Routing and Operator Connect capabilities while solving for carrier-hosted SBCs, on-premises SIP trunks, or bring-your-own SBCs, carriers, and operators. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, NTSCOM delivers services across the nation as well as internationally in Western Europe and Southeast Asia.

As an integrated global telecommunications solutions provider, NTSCOM provides a range of communications services for business telecommunication channels. Natively integrated into the iPILOT provisioning -portal, partnering with Dubber enables NTSCOM’s offerings to include seamless automation for unified recording and conversational intelligence, expanding the distribution of industry-leading solutions and enhancing customer experience and business intelligence.

Commenting on the announcement, Aaron Barnes, NTSCOM CEO said: “We are thrilled to partner with Dubber as their solutions are a natural fit into our current offerings and are immediately available from our network. We have already commenced deploying Dubber services into major Enterprise accounts such as TD SYNNEX and Konica Minolta.

While compliance recording and analytics are integral to furthering our customer experience, we’re equally excited about the opportunity to address the need for automated workflows and productivity based on Dubber insights. Adoption of the Dubber platform illustrates NTSCOM’s  commitment to delivering the best-in-industry solutions to enhance our customer experiences.”

As NTSCOM serves customers across government, education, and healthcare sectors, complying with industry regulations and mandates is of the utmost importance. Dubber’s compliant conversational intelligence platform plays a crucial role in ensuring compliance mandates are met for both internal and external duty of care standards. Dubber’s software entitles NTSCOM’s customers to use conversational intelligence to reveal insights that are aligned with industry regulations and guidelines.

This strategic partnership mutually benefits both companies as NTSCOM brings forward solutions to improve customer experience, Dubber is deploying solutions and expanding its reach across the United States.

“Our service, integrated with iPILOT will be seamlessly provisioned with NTSCOM offerings and Microsoft Teams, enabling Dubber to be uniquely delivered as a service so that NTSCOM, its customers and partners can switch on and deliver value immediately.

NTSCOM is an important component of our service provider partnership strategy and we aim to become a key attribute to their success.  By coming together we provide the key value differentiation customers are looking for and service providers require to continue meeting the needs of the quickly evolving data-shaped landscape. Everyone at Dubber and NTSCOM is very excited by this new partnership.” – Michael Abenhaim, Dubber SVP of Americas Sales.

Today we had the opportunity to take Shareholders through Dubber’s strategy and why we are so excited about the opportunity ahead of us.

• Gamma launches Dubber intelligent call recording and Dubber AI, enabling partners and customers to unlock the value in voice
• Dubber is the exclusive vendor for MiFID II compliant call recording on Microsoft Teams via Gamma partners
• Available across Gamma’s Microsoft Teams voice enablement portfolio
• Dubber is a leading certified recording service for compliant call recording on Microsoft Teams

London, United Kingdom; Melbourne, Australia – 15 November 2022 — Dubber Corporation Limited (ASX:DUB), the leading conversational intelligence and unified recording platform for service providers and their customers globally, is pleased to announce it has been selected by Gamma Communications plc (“Gamma”). Gamma can now provide intelligent call recording as a service, applicable for general business and regulated compliance requirements, plus Dubber’s leading conversational AI on Microsoft Teams.

Gamma is one of the most significant telecommunications service providers in the United Kingdom. Their network of over 1,600 channel partners will now be able to sell Dubber across all of Gamma’s Microsoft Teams voice enablement portfolio. Gamma has been a Gold Partner with Microsoft for 15 years and is one of a small, select group of providers specifically picked by Microsoft to offer Operator Connect in the UK.

In November 2021, Dubber was one of the first solutions to achieve certification for compliant call recording on Microsoft Teams. Dubber’s technical ability has provided benefits to companies of any size to ensure voice conversations on Microsoft Teams are recorded and stored in a compliant manner.

Businesses with a regulated recording need can now enhance their activities by utilising the advanced Dubber platform, which unlocks the value in conversations with conversational intelligence, and real-time text and speech-based insights to improve information accuracy, productivity and streamlined communication.

Simon Broadbent, SVP of Sales, Dubber EMEA: “The Dubber team are proud and excited to partner with Gamma to bring intelligent conversational capture on Microsoft Teams recording to their extensive network of channel partners and loyal customer base.

The unique thing about Dubber is that it is delivered as a service enabling Gamma, its customers and its reseller network to switch on and deliver value immediately.

Gamma has been at the forefront of the unprecedented adoption of Unified Communications in the UK market in the last 15 years. This partnership presents a great opportunity to further conversational intelligence innovation for Microsoft Teams users going forward.”

Chris Wade, Chief Marketing and Product Officer, Gamma: “It’s widely reported that three-quarters of conversations taking place at work over collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams will be recorded by 2025. That clearly shows that this capability is driving improvements in customer experience, training and compliance across voice and video.

We’ve teamed up with Dubber so our Channel Partners can offer this valuable service to their customers, enabling them to unlock the value in voice AI technologies through Gamma to capture critical voice data securely.”

About Dubber:

Dubber enables service providers to turn existing networks and services into an exponential source of value for differentiated innovation, retention, and revenue. Dubber is the clear market leader in conversational intelligence and unified recording – embedded at the heart of over 175 service provider networks and services and used daily by over 580,000 subscribers worldwide.

For more information, please visit Dubber at www.dubber.net

Global Investors & Media
Terry Alberstein
terry@navigatecommunication.com.au
+61 (0) 458 484 921

EMEA Media
Annabel Clementson
annabel@wearetfd.com
+44 (0)7951 786 435

About Gamma:

Gamma is a leading supplier of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) in the UK, German, Spanish and Dutch business markets. It is AIM listed and employs 1650 people. With a range of UCaaS, Mobile and Connectivity services, Gamma provides robust and secure solutions that enable organisations to communicate, collaborate and offer a better customer experience.

Gamma’s largest market is in the UK where the company’s network-based services are supplied to SME, Public Sector and Enterprise markets through a network of 1000+ channel partners and its own direct sales and support capabilities. In 2021 Gamma acquired Mission Labs, a well-established UCaaS technology business which has built a reputation for creating technologically advanced solutions and delivering great service to its customers and partners. The acquisition has enabled Gamma to enhance and expand its cloud contact centre (CCaaS) technology as well as accelerate its digital channel strategy.

Gamma is expanding its UCaaS presence in Europe with a family of businesses focusing on digital automation, delivering Gamma-powered services to SME customers largely via a network of channel partners in Germany, Spain, and the Benelux region.

Contact
Paul Aitkenhead, 07791569612
paul.aitkenhead@gamma.co.uk

“Once you understand what isn’t working… the answer really becomes more clear,” says Michael Abenhaim, SVP of Americas Sales at Dubber.

Abenhaim describes a seismic challenge facing the service provider community and discusses a path forward. Native services and applications offered at a higher margin and lower cost, underpinned with 100% customer ownership will, according to Abenhaim, deliver the differentiation SPs and customers are looking for, but without deep partnering this solution is still difficult to realize. “By making conversational intelligence native on their network, service providers set the building blocks in place to deliver unique and valuable intelligence back to their customers in ways others are not or cannot,” Abenhaim adds.

In this podcast, Abenhaim opens the idea of conversational data as a place for providers to tap into, offering their customers an invaluable intelligence resource, and unlocking an underpenetrated revenue stream.

Dubber enables SPs to create infinite value by using technology to generate visibility within networks. Unlocking the value of the network starts IN the network.

Listen to the full podcast