Office 365 E5 has Limited Enterprise Voice Scalability

While billed as an enterprise-ready service, Office 365 E5 is not really scalable to enterprise level. By their own admission on their TechNet website, Office 365 E5 can't handle a high volume of calls. Since they don't define what "high volume of calls" means, I can only interpret that the cloud implementation is more "skype-like" scalable than enterprise scalable.

Missing enterprise scalability features include:

• PSTN Calls Capped at 3,000 Minutes Per User Per Month – Office 365 E5 limits PSTN calls (inbound and outbound to 3,000 minutes in the US and 600 minutes internationally).

PanTerra provides unlimited calling both in the US and internationally (per minute rates for international calls apply) so that enterprises don't have to worry about being limited in their customer interactions.

• No Multi-Location, Multi-Payment Billing – Office 365 E5 does not support the ability to set up multiple billing groups within an organization with separate payment methods and invoices. Nor does it support the creation of multiple billing statements, all of which are essential to larger enterprises that want their cloud services to fit into their cost management infrastructure.

PanTerra provides a completely flexible and customizable billing/invoicing system that allows enterprises to set up multiple billing groups with separate and distinct payment options. In addition, PanTerra supports multiple separate billing statements that can summarize and subtotal specific groups of users or account level services.

• No Support for Response Groups – Office 365 E5 does not support response groups at all (i.e. ring groups). This means you cannot route an incoming call to a group of users such as a group of support agents or sales people. This is a basic and fundamental voice service feature that most enterprises require to do business.

PanTerra provides complete response group support.

• No Support for Digital Faxing and Other Advanced Voice Features – Office 365 E5 does not support digital faxing at all. In addition, it does not support any analog phones, common area phones, extension dialing from IP phones, message waiting indicator, multiple DID lines per user (private line), Bridge Line Appearance (BLA), Busy Lamp Field (BLF), Salesforce integration, hoteling, call parking, three-way conferencing with PSTN users, click to call from IP phones or remote call control of IP phones. Individually, these features might be insignificant, but taken as a whole, Office 365 E5 is missing major enterprise features.

PanTerra supports digital faxing as well as all the other voice features listed above. It is a true enterprise capable voice/UC service.

• No Toll Free Number Support – Office 365 E5 does not support Microsoft provided toll free numbers.

PanTerra can provide both regular and toll free numbers.

So, when you’re looking for a solution that includes ‘the beef’, Office 365 E5 comes up pretty skimpy. In my next post, I’ll show how Office 365 E5 totally lacks a complete solution approach.