Unified Communications for MSPs and Channel Resellers
Unified Communications solutions can be a great line of business for MSPs and resellers. It can also become a steady source of tickets, escalations, and frustration if it’s sold or deployed without enough upfront clarity.
The difference usually has very little to do with feature checklists. For partners, success usually comes down to two things:
- choosing a deployment model that fits how the customer actually operates
- being able to manage and support that environment cleanly across many customers
This guide looks at unified communications from the partner side. It focuses on repeatable delivery, operational control, and platform choices that don’t corner you later.
From Customer Pain to Deployment Decisions
In a recent Bridgecast episode, Sangoma’s Jeff Martis and Shane Cleckler make a point that’s familiar to any MSP who has cleaned up someone else’s rushed deployment: stop walking into the conversation with blinders on. Ask how the business runs, what breaks when phones go down, and what the team has to support day to day.
That sounds obvious. It’s still rare in UC deals.
Many buyers show up asking for “a new phone system” because that’s the label they know. Your job is to translate that request into constraints and outcomes:
- Where does the business lose money when communications fail?
- Who owns day-two admin?
- What happens during an internet outage at a critical site?
- How much customization is required, and who will maintain it?
- What will the environment look like in 18 months after acquisitions, new sites, turnover, and “we added Teams”?
When you lead with those questions, the deployment model stops being a religious debate and turns into an implementation choice.
What a Unified Communications System Should Look Like from a Partner Side
Flexible Deployment Options for Diverse Clients
If you serve enough customers, you already know the pattern: one model never fits every account.
Your client base is mixed by default. Some want quick rollout and minimal footprint. Some have compliance rules. Some cannot tolerate outages. Some have legacy phones and site realities that do not bend for a marketing slide. That’s why deployment choice matters.
Sangoma is built around supporting cloud UCaaS, hybrid UCaaS, and on-prem UC as first-class options.
Hybrid is worth calling out in MSP terms because it solves the messy edge cases you actually get tickets for:
- internal calling that should stay up during upstream outages
- local QoS control when voice and video share bandwidth with everything else
- failover paths beyond “buy another circuit,” including secondary internet, POTS, or wireless backup
Full Control Over Accounts and Branding
Partners need to own the relationship. That includes account control, predictable provisioning, and the ability to deliver a consistent experience under your own brand standards. Your customer should call you first, not your vendor.
Straightforward Provisioning and Centralized Management
If your UC product forces your team into one-off builds for every customer, you’ll feel it in ticket volume and onboarding time.
Look for:
- clean separation between customers
- predictable role-based access
- repeatable templates and policies
- simple adds, moves, and changes
Multi-tenant support matters here, especially when you’re managing many SMBs or multi-site customers. Sangoma’s cloud UCaaS supports multi-tenant configurations.
Integration-Ready Architecture
A unified communications system becomes manageable when it fits into the stack you already run: identity and directory, CRM, and the PSA/RMM workflows your team lives in.
Sangoma’s cloud UCaaS materials call out integrations like Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, plus broader collaboration tooling in the platform.
Built-In Collaboration that Reduces Tool Sprawl
A lot of SMB and mid-market customers don’t need a complex collaboration suite. They need something people will actually use consistently.
- Sangoma TeamHub includes voice calling, chat, SMS, video meetings, personal file storage, and a desktop and web experience.
- Sangoma Meet supports secure video meetings with features like screen sharing and AI-powered transcription.
Keep your pitch simple: fewer places for messages to disappear, fewer credentials to manage, fewer “which app was that in?” moments.
Support You Can Stand Behind
Business unified communications problems are time-sensitive by nature. When it breaks, it breaks loudly.
On the platform side, Sangoma documents a 99.999% uptime target for cloud UCaaS, supported by redundancy and 24/7 monitoring.
On the service delivery side, Sangoma reported a 28.9-point increase in NPS and a CSAT improvement to 94.6% within a year, based on structured customer feedback and ongoing service coaching.
That doesn’t guarantee perfection. It does show the vendor is measuring the right things and paying attention.
Importance of Multi-Tenant Architecture
Multi-tenant architecture is not a “nice to have” for partners. It’s the difference between scalable operations and constant context switching.
A partner-ready multi-tenant design supports:
- centralized oversight with clean separation between customers
- standardized rollout patterns
- simpler support workflows
- safer admin models, fewer accidental cross-tenant changes
Sangoma’s cloud UCaaS provides multi-tenant configuration and security, which is exactly the operational shape MSPs need when they manage many customer environments.
Where Unified Communications Delivers Value for MSPs and Resellers
Easier Client Management Through Centralized Tools
The fastest way to burn margin is forcing engineers to bounce between systems that were never designed for partner scale. Centralized tools reduce the small time-wasters that compound across accounts:
- user adds and moves
- device management
- license tracking
- quick visibility into recent system changes
That’s why dashboards, audit logs, and fast navigation matter more than feature lists.
Lower Support Burden through Stability and Visibility
Stability changes your ticket profile. You stop dealing with constant call quality complaints and start doing higher-value work: onboarding, workflow tuning, reporting, and adoption.
Cloud reliability targets like 99.999% uptime reduce the baseline risk, and hybrid survivability can keep local calling alive when the internet path fails.
Reduced Vendor Complexity
Every extra vendor adds:
- another contract
- another portal
- another support queue
- another training surface area
Consolidating voice, video, messaging, and collaboration in one platform trims that overhead. Sangoma’s cloud UCaaS is explicitly described as an all-in-one approach that integrates voice, video, and messaging, with Meet and TeamHub as built-in collaboration options.
Red Flags to Avoid When Choosing a UCaaS Vendor
Watch for issues that create pain later:
- Channel conflict: unclear boundaries between vendor direct sales and your account ownership
- Weak multi-tenant management: no clean separation, poor visibility, slow navigation
- Vague uptime and resiliency: marketing claims without clear targets, redundancy, or monitoring detail
- Provisioning friction: slow user adds, brittle device workflows, limited audit trail
- Complex pricing: hard to quote, hard to explain, surprises at renewal
- Support gating: escalation paths that require certifications or hoops when you have a customer outage
- Shallow integrations: “integrates” that really mean a basic connector with no operational value
Cloud UCaaS vs. Hybrid vs. On-Prem Unified Communications: What to Offer and When
Cloud UCaaS
Cloud communication platform deployment works well when the customer values speed, minimal on-site infrastructure, and remote access across distributed teams. Sangoma’s cloud UCaaS positioning highlights end-to-end management, 24/7 support, and multi-tenant configurations.
Good fit patterns:
- multi-site businesses without heavy customization needs
- organizations with small IT teams
- customers who want predictable subscription costs
Hybrid UCaaS
Hybrid UCaaS model is often the most practical option for customers who want cloud advantages but cannot tolerate losing internal calling when the internet drops.
The Bridgecast conversation hits a scenario MSPs see often: “we have redundant internet, we’re fine,” followed by a backhoe or a shared building entry point taking both circuits out. The survivability conversation gets real quickly when a site can’t go dark.
Sangoma’s hybrid systems provide cloud remote access with local survivability for reliability.
Good fit patterns:
- healthcare, manufacturing, schools, hospitality, and other environments where downtime is operational risk
- multi-site organizations that want continuity at critical locations
- customers who need more control than cloud-only deployments usually allow
A practical way to explain hybrid to a customer:
- users get cloud access for day-to-day work
- the site still has a local “keep talking” capability when circuits fail
On-prem UC
An on-prem deployed communication system still makes sense when the customer needs on-site control, has strict requirements, or has the internal capability to own the environment.
Sangoma’s on-prem UC as a fully featured VoIP system designed for small and mid-sized businesses.
Good fit patterns:
- environments with strict data or network policies
- customers with IT staff who want full ownership
- sites where customization is deep and stable over time
A Survivability Checklist MSPs Can use in Discovery
When a customer says, “we can’t be down,” don’t accept it as a vague preference. Treat it as a design input.
Ask:
- Which sites must keep internal calling running during an outage?
- Is there an operational fallback when the WAN is down?
- What do reception, dispatch, clinical staff, or plant supervisors do when phones drop?
- How often does the site experience circuit issues?
- Is wireless failover part of the plan?
Sangoma’s phone systems remain operational during internet outages and have automatic wireless 4G/5G failover for continuity.
That’s the type of language customers understand: “Can the front desk still call housekeeping when the internet dies?”
Why Sangoma Is a Strong Fit for MSPs & Channel Resellers
Here’s the practical case for Sangoma in the channel:
- All three deployment models
Sangoma supports cloud, hybrid, and on-prem, which lets you match real client constraints instead of forcing every account into one pattern. - Resiliency that shows up in real environments
Hybrid survivability and failover options are built into the way Sangoma talks about continuity, including wireless backup in environments where outages are costly. - All-in-one UCaaS with collaboration included
Voice, video, and messaging live in one platform, with Meet and TeamHub as built-in options. - Proven reliability targets and operational monitoring
Sangoma documents a 99.999% uptime approach for cloud UCaaS, backed by redundancy and 24/7 monitoring. - A support culture that measures itself
Measurable improvements in CSAT and NPS tied to daily coaching and operational follow-through. - Scale and footprint
Sangoma reports supporting more than 2.7 million UC seats across 100,000 customers, with cloud, hybrid, and on-prem deployments. - 100% channel-focused
Sangoma is fully committed to the channel, with no direct sales team. That means our success is based on our partners success.
If you want the shortest version: Sangoma gives MSPs room to design around customer reality, then back it with platform reliability and support discipline.