Connecting Office 365 to a local phone operator with Cloud Connector Edition

You've probably heard about Microsoft Office 365 Cloud PBX. This is a new feature that lets you use Microsoft PBX in cloud without needing to have a PBX on-premises installation. Sounds perfect, doesn’ it? Well, to understand the details, we need to mention that on its own, Cloud PBX will not be able to provide you with PSTN numbers in Switzerland, for example. PSTN calling is only available in the U.S., France, and the U.K. But there’s a solution: Cloud Connector Edition, or CCE. You can interconnect Office 365 Cloud PBX with an on-premises PBX or PSTN Swiss operator. You do this using do-it-yourself Microsoft images on your physical Hyper-V server or you can purchase an appliance from Sonus Networks or AudioCodes. The advantage of the appliance solution is that it is already SBC included (with all necessary physical connectivity), and the most complex part of CCE deployment is drastically simplified for IT administrator. The CCE Appliance contains two motherboards, one for SBC and the second is a server that hosts the virtual machines required for the Microsoft connector. Management of both SBC and CCE is integrated into the familiar Web GUI. Let’s start with the Sonus solution, “Sonus Cloud Link.” It is based on the SBC 1000 and 2000 models with an enhanced ASM board featuring 32 GB of RAM, an SSD, and an 8-core Intel CPU. Here is a typical multisite deployment scenario:

AudioCodes 's solution is based on its popular Mediant series and is called “Mediant CCE.” Here is a typical multi-site scenario:

In summary, Sonus or Audiocodes CEE provides Office 365 Cloud PBX local- PSTN -connectivity, or interconnects with on-premises systems PBX; deployment time is reduced to a matter of hours; management is handled through a familiar web GUI interface; the appliance also provides traditional SBC connectivity as well.