Communications as a Service (CaaS) Featured Article

BroadSoft Unified Communications Solutions Now Interoperable with Office 365

By Rory Lidstone
Contributing Writer

Global unified communications software as a service (UCaaS) provider BroadSoft has made its BroadWorks, BroadCloud and UC-One unified communication and collaboration solutions compatible with Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365. Naturally, this move enables powerful integration for BroadSoft and Office 365 users, allowing them to enhance communication, business workflows and mobile productivity.

Sticking to its longstanding commitment to open platforms, BroadSoft (News - Alert) used Microsoft’s software developer kits to facilitate integration with Office 365. This approach was also the best way to ensure smooth interoperability of BroadSoft’s communication and collaboration services with Microsoft’s cloud productivity suite.

"With Microsoft Office 365's significant and growing commercial installed base, these users represent an attractive market opportunity for BroadSoft and service providers," said Michael Tessler, president and chief executive officer of BroadSoft. "We believe that the BroadSoft Microsoft Office 365 hosted-PBX (News - Alert) integration offers service providers a proven carrier-class and differentiated solution that enhances customers' desktop productivity and leverages existing software investments."

In other recent BroadSoft news, the company recently made a major expansion into Japan through the acquisition of cloud communication provider PBXL. Through this, BroadSoft expects to offer services to around 5 million small businesses in the country, covering roughly 70 percent of the workforce there.

As for the BroadSoft Office 365 integration, customers can now leverage BroadSoft’s cloud PBX and UC-One capabilities from within the Microsoft Office 365 desktop application. This includes cloud-based calling capabilities to any telephone in the world. Other features include click-to-call capabilities to any phone number in e-mails, documents, databases, address books and even those found on web pages—all from within Office 365 applications and with true carrier-grade quality and reliability.

As Steve Guggenheimer (News - Alert), corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer eXperience & Evangelism (DX) group, put it, integrating BroadSoft’s business communications solutions with Office 365 allows customers to be more productive from anywhere.