A complete guide to Orchid Collab and Link2Teams
Comprehensive tools for communication and collaboration are rapidly becoming a table-stakes investment for businesses worldwide. In today’s age of hybrid and remote work, companies need to invest in platforms which keep their team members aligned, connected, and engaged.
Solutions like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have exploded into the spotlight in recent years, offering new ways to synchronise flexible workforces. The evolution of these tools has opened new doors for service providers to deliver enhanced value to their customers by linking their collaboration platforms with powerful business voice capabilities.
Orchid Collab and Link2Teams, designed by the leading innovators at Cataleya, offer service providers an opportunity to open new revenue streams through intuitive phone system integration. Let’s take a closer look at what Orchid Collab and Link2Teams can do.
Orchid Collab Review: The Features of Orchid Collab
Orchid Collab is a state-of-the-art service automation tool designed to simplify the process of integrating Zoom and Microsoft Teams environments with voice carrier services. The solution allows enterprises and SMBs to integrate their own SIP trunk provider into Microsoft Teams or Zoom with a simple and intuitive GUI. Additionally, service providers and MSPs can use the ecosystem to seamlessly onboard and engage users with flexible UCaaS services.
Orchid Collab acts as an all-in-one portal and provisioning tool, which automates the integration and configuration of Zoom Phone and MS Teams solutions with a user’s choice of carrier. Using a combination of APIs and tools provided by Zoom and Microsoft, Collab programmatically provisions users and services with zero-touch onboarding capabilities for service providers.
With Orchid Collab, companies can:
- Automate provisioning: Streamline the provisioning of new users and services on Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and simplify migration processes.
- Automate configuration: Rapidly configure SIP trunks via the Orchid Link SBC for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and Zoom Phone Premise Peering.
- Integrate tools: Connect existing BSS/OSS platforms leveraged by end users to the Zoom or Teams ecosystem with API integration.
- Deliver reporting capabilities: Integrate reporting solutions to leverage CDR and analytics data, driving greater operational intelligence, SLA management, and quality of service control.
- Streamline Operator Connect: Users of Orchid Collab in the service provider landscape can streamline the process of getting certified for programs like Operator Connect, with API integrations and provisioning requirements already managed for them.
What is Link2Teams? Orchid Collab as a Service
Alongside the Orchid Collab service, built on the powerful Orchid SBC (Session Border Controller) technology, companies can also access Orchid Collab “as a service” via Link2Teams. The Link2Teams offering is a carrier peering and direct routing system offered as a managed service by Cataleya, leveraging the company’s multi-tenant cloud service.
The solution connects Zoom and Microsoft Teams users to PBXs and SIP Trunks via Orchid Cloud SBCaaS, currently available across 7 locations worldwide. This powerful solution supports geo-redundancy through calls which can be routed through up to 7 SBC notes, enabling the configuration of failover routes for conversations. Additionally, enterprises can subscribe to the cloud service with a simple, user-based monthly pricing structure.
Built on Orchid Collab, Link2Teams is available through two different services. The Carrier Link2Teams option allows enterprises to connect their existing carrier to Microsoft Teams or Zoom, while the PBX solution makes PBX integration possible.
The Benefits of Orchid Collab and Link2Teams
Orchid Collab and Link2Teams from Cataleya provide both service providers and enterprise users with a simple way to leverage voice capabilities within some of the world’s most popular collaboration tools.
The flexible solutions are built on top of Cataleya’s Orchid Link SBC, a carrier-grade product designed to power the voice services of fixed, wholesale, mobile, and enterprise providers. Additionally, Orchid Collab services are designed to work closely with Cataleya’s SBC services, which natively support HTTP REST APIs for configuration.
Benefits include:
- Flexibility: Orchid Collab and Link2Teams provide companies with a variety of ways to link voice services to Microsoft Teams or Zoom. Partners and operators can use the solution to provision SBCs, define capacity constraints, and even integrate additional tools (such as reporting, BSS, and OSS platforms) into the ecosystem for each enterprise user.
- SBC integration: Because Orchid Collab is tightly connected with the Cataleya SBC landscape, it offers new and existing customers a convenient and quick way to build and provide Direct Routing and Premise Peering solutions for Microsoft Teams and Zoom using the XaaS model. It also enables qualification for programs like Microsoft Operator Connect.
- Scalability: The flexible and global solution can be accessed across 7 locations worldwide, with more SBCaaS locations planned to arrive in the future. Service Providers can use the ecosystem to rapidly scale their services and provide enterprises with quick configuration and provisioning experiences on a zero-touch basis.
- Security and reliability: Cataleya already meets the requirements of initiatives like Operator Connect with highly robust and secure voice communication capabilities. Additionally, companies can set up their own failover solutions to improve uptime and minimise issues with Service Level Agreements.
- Analytics: The comprehensive and easy-to-use ecosystem provided by Cataleya comes with access to a comprehensive automation portal, as well as unparalleled service analytics. Companies can even leverage QoS analytics and monitoring tools to keep track of interactions and ensure enterprise users are accessing the best possible experience.
Simplifying the Path to Voice with Cataleya
Cataleya’s Link2Teams and Orchid Collab solutions provide service providers with a convenient way to set up voice capabilities within Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The services are designed to reduce the complexity connected to delivering voice services, with automated provisioning for SBCs, SIP Trunks, peering trunks, routing policies and more.
Additionally, the systems not only integrate with Cataleya’s powerful SBC solutions but can also work alongside other SBC tools. Multi-tenancy capabilities are already built-in, along with hierarchical workflow and management tools, to assist business leaders in delivering the highest quality of service to all enterprise users.
Cataleya has even addressed the flexibility and agility needs of service providers and enterprises by offering multiple deployment options, which allow end-users to keep their service provider contracts when they move to Teams and provide MSPs with more revenue opportunities.
“Simplifying the use and operation of platforms for customers is a key objective of Cataleya and we continuously work to achieve the best outcomes, allowing service providers to onboard and reconfigure new enterprise customers on the fly without IT specialist involved” says Rama Sulikunte, CTO.
