Operators Driving Customer Success - Colt and AudioCodes Live Platform strategic partnership

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Who should listen: Service providers and channel partners building Microsoft Teams voice and multi-UC offers, plus M365 service owners and UC architects evaluating Operator Connect, Direct Routing, hybrid on-premises voice and carrier-delivered AI add-ons.

Guest: David Renfree and Jason Wyatt — Manager of UC Sales Specialists (Colt) and EMEA Marketing Director (AudioCodes), Colt Technology Services / AudioCodes

David Renfree, Manager of UC Sales Specialists at Colt Technology Services, and Jason Wyatt, EMEA Marketing Director at AudioCodes, explain how Colt built its Direct Routing, Operator Connect and multi-UC voice services on the AudioCodes Live Platform. They cover the shift from commoditised minutes to value-based conversations, where on-premises SBCs still earn their place, and how AI applications are being bundled into carrier PSTN offers.

Many thanks to AudioCodes, sponsor of this episode.

Key insights

• Colt now enables connectivity into Microsoft Teams across 21 countries via its Intelligent Communications service on AudioCodes Live Platform, with portal-level automation so Colt can provision and observe the estate end-to-end without raising vendor support tickets. ▶ 6:41
• Live Platform is no longer a Teams-only play — Colt uses it as a multi-UC routing layer into Teams, Cisco WebEx (with a noticeable resurgence in WebEx Calling enquiries), Zoom, Genesys and Twilio, plus on-premises gateways. ▶ 4:37
• Because European DDI ranges cannot be split across providers, Colt uses the platform to route individual numbers within a range to different applications — Teams, a third-party CCaaS, VOCA, or on-site gateways — and change that routing dynamically, which also underpins disaster recovery when everything else depends on internet or SD-WAN. ▶ 8:44
• Buying Live Platform does not lock a carrier into the full AudioCodes application stack: Colt runs VOCA alongside third-party contact centres (Genesys, Five9, NICE) where contracts, regulation or lifecycle timing dictate, and uses Voice AI Connect for chatbot/voicebot integration. ▶ 9:44
• On-premises SBCs and gateways remain a genuine differentiator, not legacy baggage — high-tech manufacturing sites still need entry barriers, DECT and tannoy systems integrated with the UC estate, and refusing that complexity means taking only the easy part of the deal. ▶ 12:49
• Colt bundles AudioCodes Meeting Insights into its Operator Connect and Direct Routing offers for a low per-user fee, giving recording, transcription and summaries to users who do not need the full Copilot licence — a way out of competing purely on price per user or per number. ▶ 14:20
• Enterprise finance teams now ask for predictability over rate cuts: procurement exercises were costing more than the 3% call-spend savings they achieved, while inbound toll-free spikes at Christmas and outbound peaks in January are the real pain points. ▶ 15:21
• AudioCodes' own revenue mix has moved from roughly 90% SBC sales to about 60%, with the balance shifting to live services — a CapEx-to-OpEx transition still novel in Germany, France and Spain. ▶ 26:02
• AI Summaries brings meeting AI into the room through an AudioCodes meeting device at $25 per meeting room per month for up to 100 users, free for the first six months, positioned to sit alongside Meeting Insights and Copilot rather than replace them. ▶ 18:23

Insights summarised by AI from the episode transcript, reviewed by the Empowering.Cloud team.

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