Monday, July 1 will be a big moment in the history of the company as they switch to “off” their legacy PBX phone system for good to trust solely on its own Microsoft Teams collaboration software for internal company communications.
When you add up the investment the company has made over 28 years, it’s well over $40 million for the wires and nodes, and more than $200 per phone purchased and installed. There were about 6,000 employees when the system was first installed, but that number had ballooned to 79,000 by the time Microsoft started switching employees to Lync in 2007.
That PBX system is no longer necessary because all normal user communications are on Microsoft Teams and because Microsoft is using third-party solutions to provide specialty services.