Introduction Unified Communications (UC) has existed for over 2 decades, and “58% of US companies while the shift from legacy communications systems to digital unified with $1M+ revenue communications platforms has accelerated in recent years due to the already use cloud- global pandemic, there is still a large swath of companies reliant on based UCaaS” fixed or mobile telephony services for communicating externally. – AVANT State of Research firm Cavell Group estimates that there are 467 million users Disruption Report in the global business calling market.i While adoption has been rapid, there is a significant opportunity for growth left in the UC market. There are 39 million UCaaS users in the United States market, according to Cavell Group, yet there are 135 million employeesii in the national workforce. ª With so much potential, and so many users still “up for grabs”, vendors have stayed busy redefining the capabilities of UC platforms. Companies such as Zoom are vying to further combine communications technologies with collaboration tools, pitting them against Microsoft, which has long aimed to leverage its Office user base into the use of its Teams offering. ª Microsoft’s ability to push Teams adoption is changing. Regulatory pressure from the European Union resulted in the company unbundling Teams from Office 365 suites for enterprise customers in late 2023, a policy that was applied globally in April 2024.iii Enterprise customers will be able to choose a lower- price standalone Office suite or bundled Teams offering at contract renewal time. ª While Teams has built a formidable presence in the UCaaS market, only a small fraction of Teams users are connected to the public PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), leaving a notable challenge for enterprises that want to leverage Teams for all their voice communication needs 8 These market developments mean enterprises have more freedom to choose based on their unique organizational goals. In turn, there are significant opportunities for competitors such as RingCentral, About AVANT 8x8, Vonage, Dialpad and others to stay ahead of Microsoft in offering robust UC PSTN-connected solutions. These solutions natively support and can connect to Teams to complement and enhance it with PSTN voice access. Copyright © 2025 AVANT Communications, Inc. 1