Collaboration & Unified Communications

Summary

emPOWER Collaboration is blueAPACHE's telephony and unified communications pillar: cloud voice, meetings, messaging and contact centre delivered as a managed service across Microsoft Teams, Zoom and RingCentral, with the voice carriage riding blueAPACHE's own emPOWER Network. The pillar was defined in the 2023 Global Capabilities Brochure as a complete telephony, unified communications and call centre solution as a service, supporting on-premise, mobile, managed, hosted or hybrid deployment for a fixed monthly fee. This hub sets out what the pillar covers, its three platform service lines, how migrations from legacy telephony are delivered, what support and service levels apply, how collaboration integrates with the Connectivity, Cloud, Security and Managed Services pillars, and the two published multi-country deployments that evidence it. It is written for IT and operations leaders replacing a PBX, consolidating fragmented meeting and messaging tools, or standing up a contact centre.

Key facts

What the pillar covers

The origin page frames the pillar around how people work: voice, meetings, messaging and collaboration modernised through one integrated operating model that combines planning, deployment and ongoing optimisation across leading platforms. Its capability list is: cloud voice and unified communications; Microsoft Teams, Zoom and RingCentral expertise; secure meetings, messaging and collaboration platforms; migration from legacy telephony and communication systems; ongoing support, management and optimisation; and governance, adoption and user experience support. The four outcomes it names are productivity, experience, flexibility and adoption.

The 2023 Global Capabilities Brochure describes the same pillar in supply terms. emPOWER Collaboration offers a complete telephony, unified communications and call centre management solution as a service, supports on-premise, mobile, managed, hosted or hybrid deployment, removes the need to pay for hardware and infrastructure now or in the future, and gives access to advanced enterprise-grade features for a fixed monthly fee. blueAPACHE's positioning is that it gives mid-market organisations capabilities previously only available to large enterprises at a fraction of the cost and complexity.

The part of the pillar that blueAPACHE itself operates is voice carriage. The emPOWER Network brochure lists a full suite of voice carriage solutions including Microsoft Teams PSTN services, SIP trunking and terminations, enabling set-up and management of VoIP networks, and the emPOWER Connectivity brochure adds Microsoft Teams Direct Routing, hosted PBX and contact centre solutions. Because the carriage, the WAN and the QoS policy are all on the emPOWER Network, blueAPACHE can prioritise voice and video end to end rather than best-effort over the public internet. The brochure also argues that unified communications cuts telecommunication costs and improves quality of service and security, which is the commercial case blueAPACHE puts for buying voice from the same provider as the network.

Services in this pillar

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams services that bring chat, meetings, collaboration and business communications together in a platform users already know. blueAPACHE provides Teams PSTN services and Direct Routing over the emPOWER Network, and Teams calling has been the replacement for legacy PBX and VoIP systems in the Archers and Berry Street engagements. Microsoft Teams sits at the intersection of this pillar and the Microsoft Practice's Modern Work solution area, and Teams traffic benefits from the ExpressRoute connections to Microsoft 365 that the emPOWER Network provides.

Zoom

Zoom collaboration services that support secure video meetings and hybrid teamwork as part of a connected business communications environment. Zoom is one of the partners shown on the origin site's partner carousel, and the origin site lists a case study describing blueAPACHE's own use of Zoom at the core of its mid-market managed services; that case study is referenced here only as the origin page describes it. The emPOWER Connectivity brochure names Zoom among the SaaS applications that benefit from IX peering.

RingCentral

Cloud communications through RingCentral, supported by blueAPACHE expertise for unified voice, messaging, meetings and customer communications. The Lovisa case study describes RingCentral as one of blueAPACHE's global strategic partners within its emPOWER Voice offerings, and documents blueAPACHE acting as trusted advisor: assessing Lovisa's current-state problems and future requirements, recommending RingCentral RingEX, facilitating workshops with RingCentral, and confirming the platform met the operational and functional criteria, after which Lovisa's internal team ran the deployment with RingCentral Professional Services and blueAPACHE support. RingCentral's call queuing, reporting and management functionality supported both a 24/7 internal IT service desk and a new follow-the-sun customer service centre.

How it is delivered

Assessment and platform selection. The origin page describes a combined planning, deployment and optimisation model. In practice blueAPACHE's role can range from advisory (Lovisa: recommend the platform, run workshops, validate fit, then support a customer-led rollout) to full delivery (Archers: replace an aged legacy VoIP/PBX with Microsoft Teams calling inside a fixed-price IT-as-a-Service engagement; Berry Street: selected through a second RFP to replace an end-of-life on-premises voice solution with Teams telephony).

Migration decisions that determine speed. The Lovisa deployment reached 42 countries in four weeks because of three choices documented in the case study: a clean break on numbering, with stores renumbered so internal extensions matched store numbers rather than porting legacy numbers; reuse of most existing handsets, reconfigured remotely; and a follow-the-sun customer service centre with local numbers around the world replacing a single international number. The case study also records that telephony rules differ by country, with VoIP still illegal in some and outbound numbers unavailable in others, and that work-arounds were applied so every store retained conventional local calling.

Carriage and QoS. Where voice runs on emPOWER Connectivity, blueAPACHE works with the customer to define business-critical applications and apply QoS policies end to end, prioritising voice and video. Teams PSTN, Direct Routing, SIP trunking and hosted PBX are provisioned on the emPOWER Network under Schedule 6, and unified communications under Schedule 7.

Ongoing management. The pillar includes ongoing support, management and optimisation, and governance, adoption and user experience support. Telephony is inside the emPOWER Managed Services help desk scope, so a customer holding both services raises voice incidents through the same desk. Standard governance applies: monthly reports within 5 Business Days of month end and 6-monthly service reviews.

Third-party terms. Microsoft Teams, Zoom and RingCentral are third-party platforms. Under clauses 3.20 to 3.24 of the General Terms and Conditions the customer is bound by the licensor's terms whether or not they have been brought to its attention, blueAPACHE uses best efforts to supply those terms at signing, and if the customer breaches them the licensor may require blueAPACHE to terminate that part of the service without liability. Clause 12.5 allows blueAPACHE to pass through licensor price changes proportionally from the date they take effect.

Support and service levels

Published. The 2023 brochure positions the pillar as a fixed monthly fee service. Voice carriage on the emPOWER Network is monitored proactively 24/7, 365 days a year, and unified threat protection on the network is supported 24x7. Where the customer holds emPOWER Managed Services, help desk coverage is unlimited 24/7 and telephony is explicitly within that desk's scope. Where the customer's only other service is emPOWER Connectivity, its service desk runs 7am to 7pm on business days with 24x7 monitoring.

Not published. blueAPACHE publishes no availability figure specific to voice or unified communications, no call quality (MOS, jitter, packet loss) commitment, no number-porting timeframes, and no response or resolution targets. Any Service Level for voice or UC is the one written under the heading "Service Level" in the Schedule 6 or Schedule 7 Service Description, measured with blueAPACHE's tools and subject to the Reasonable Excuse exclusions, which include third-party software used by blueAPACHE and acts of third parties, both of which are relevant when the platform is Microsoft, Zoom or RingCentral.

Scope note on mobile. emPOWER Mobile Services has its own Schedule 8 but does not appear among the ten services listed on blueAPACHE's ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate. Voice Carriage and Unified Communications do.

How it integrates with the other pillars

• Connectivity. Voice carriage, Teams Direct Routing, SIP trunking, hosted PBX and QoS are delivered on the emPOWER Network, and IX peering is cited for lower latency to Microsoft 365, Teams and Zoom. Sealy of Australia's international voice and data network is the clearest example of the two pillars delivered together. See the Connectivity hub.
• Cloud. Microsoft Teams PSTN services and Direct Routing are available within the emPOWER Cloud environment, and ExpressRoute connects Microsoft 365 and SharePoint over private paths. See the Cloud hub.
• Security. Collaboration platforms are the attack surface that Human Risk Management (phishing simulation, email threat detection, insider risk) and the DMARC service protect, and MDR's identity threat detection covers the Microsoft 365 accounts Teams depends on. The origin page states that security and governance are built into every collaboration service. See the Security hub.
• Managed Services. Telephony is in help desk scope, and Teams calling migrations appear inside managed services engagements (Archers, Berry Street). See the Managed Services hub.
• Microsoft Practice. Teams, SharePoint, Copilot and the wider Microsoft 365 workplace ecosystem are the Modern Work solution area of the Microsoft Practice hub.

Evidence

The origin page also lists a Zoom case study and the blueAPACHE Security case study under related case studies for this pillar.

Defining the collaboration service

Separate platform licensing, call carriage, network access, endpoint configuration and ongoing support. These layers may have different suppliers and service descriptions. Record who handles a platform incident, a carrier problem and an office-network problem, including the hand-offs. Treat number changes, recording and contact-centre requirements as explicit scope decisions. A feature in a vendor platform is not evidence that it is licensed, configured or supported in the proposed service.

Which document defines the commitment

The published General Terms v3.6 give the Service Order precedence over the General Terms, followed by the Schedules and then the Acceptable Use Policy (clause 2.3). Record the agreed scope, exclusions and negotiated departures in that document set. A brochure or a procurement discussion does not, by itself, define the customer-specific commitment. Keep the versions supplied at signing with the executed order and signed variations. Two offers with the same service name can cover different systems, operating hours or responsibilities.

Responsibility across the delivery chain

The published terms allow blueAPACHE to subcontract all or part of the Service Agreement without customer consent or a notification requirement. Clause 27.5 nevertheless makes blueAPACHE liable for its subcontractors’ acts and omissions to the same extent as for its employees. This differs from a third-party supplier contracted directly by the customer. Identify which arrangement applies to each dependency in the design. Where supplier identity, delivery location or change notification matters, request a documented supplier list and put any agreed notification or approval requirement in the Service Order; the general clause does not supply that visibility automatically.

Continuity when an external event interrupts service

Clause 23 addresses force majeure separately from normal incident management. Performance is suspended to the extent a qualifying event causes delay or failure. The definition includes specified events outside reasonable control; it is not a blanket classification of every outage. If the delay exceeds 20 Business Days, the other party may terminate by written notice. The clause also requires payment for services to termination and the applicable Early Termination Payment. A continuity plan should cover operational recovery and the commercial consequences of prolonged interruption. Confirm the Schedule’s exit calculation rather than assuming an externally caused outage creates a cost-free exit.

Checking charges and preserving an invoice dispute

The General Terms require payment of the invoiced amount by its due date even while an amount is disputed. The customer has 60 Business Days from the invoice date to notify an error in writing, with its calculation and evidence. A dispute about blueAPACHE’s subsequent determination requires a Dispute Notice within 10 Business Days. Missing the required windows can waive the right to correction, subject to the fraud exception. Overdue amounts attract the published margin of four per cent over the RBA Cash Rate, calculated daily. Reconcile ordered quantities, approved changes and billed usage promptly; do not wait for a periodic service review to raise a billing error.

Confidential information and access

Clause 16 provides mutual confidentiality protection. It covers information marked confidential, information identified orally and confirmed in writing within 30 days, and information that should reasonably be understood to be confidential. Customer Data, Customer Records and Customer Software are included; blueAPACHE’s agreement and fees are also confidential. Permitted disclosures include appropriately bound personnel on a need-to-know basis and specified professional advisers, with other exceptions in the clause. Identify who may receive operational reports, configuration details and commercial information. Access to information to deliver the service is not a general permission to circulate it.

Sources and scope

The contractual detail above summarises the published General Terms and Conditions v3.6, using the KB documents on service agreement formation and document precedence; subcontracting and assignment; force majeure; late payment and invoice disputes; confidentiality. The customer’s Service Order, Schedules and agreed variations determine the specific engagement. See the terms and conditions guide and Service Agreement.

Related

• Microsoft Teams
• Zoom
• RingCentral
• Connectivity hub
• Managed Services hub
• Microsoft Practice hub
• Security hub
• emPOWER Core Network and Data Centre Interconnect
• Human Risk Management
• Lovisa case study
• Sealy of Australia case study
• Zoom case study
• Archers case study
• Retail and Consumer Services industry page
• Not for Profit industry page
• Service agreement
• Home

Frequently asked questions

Which collaboration platforms does blueAPACHE support?

Microsoft Teams, Zoom and RingCentral, each with its own service page. blueAPACHE provides Teams PSTN and Direct Routing on its own network, describes RingCentral as a global strategic partner within its emPOWER Voice offerings, and delivers Zoom collaboration services as part of a connected communications environment. The platform recommended depends on the customer's current state, requirements and goals, as the Lovisa case study describes.

Does blueAPACHE carry the voice traffic itself?

Yes, where the customer takes voice carriage from blueAPACHE. The emPOWER Network offers Microsoft Teams PSTN services and Direct Routing, SIP trunking and terminations, hosted PBX and contact centre solutions, contracted under Schedule 6. Voice can be prioritised end to end with QoS policies on emPOWER Connectivity.

Can we keep our existing handsets and numbers?

The Lovisa deployment reused most existing handsets, reconfigured remotely, but deliberately abandoned legacy numbers in favour of a new numbering plan to speed the rollout. Number porting is possible in principle but blueAPACHE publishes no porting timeframes, and the case study notes that telephony rules vary by country. Handset compatibility and porting should be confirmed per platform during scoping.

How is emPOWER Collaboration priced?

The 2023 Global Capabilities Brochure describes the pillar as a fixed monthly fee for advanced enterprise-grade features, with no hardware or infrastructure to buy now or later. Under the General Terms and Conditions fixed fees are billed monthly in advance, and licensor price changes for Microsoft, Zoom or RingCentral can be passed through proportionally under clause 12.5.

Is there a published uptime or call quality commitment?

No. blueAPACHE publishes no availability figure, MOS, jitter or packet loss commitment specific to voice or unified communications. The contractual Service Level, if any, is the one written under the heading "Service Level" in the Schedule 6 or 7 Service Description. Network monitoring on the emPOWER Network is 24/7.

Who do we call when telephony fails?

If the customer holds emPOWER Managed Services, telephony is explicitly within the unlimited 24/7 help desk scope. If the customer's only other service is emPOWER Connectivity, the service desk runs 7am to 7pm on business days with 24x7 network monitoring. The applicable desk and hours should be set on the Service Order.

Can blueAPACHE run a contact centre for us?

The pillar includes call centre management as a service, and the emPOWER Connectivity brochure lists contact centre solutions among voice carriage options. The Lovisa case study shows RingCentral call queuing supporting a 24/7 internal IT service desk with agents on three eight-hour shifts, plus a new follow-the-sun customer service centre with local numbers worldwide.

Does collaboration include security controls?

The origin page states that security and governance are built into every collaboration service, with secure access, operational control and governance maintained across collaboration environments. The specific protections for email and identity, which Teams depends on, are the Security pillar's Human Risk Management, DMARC and MDR identity threat detection services.

Are Teams, Zoom and RingCentral licences covered by blueAPACHE's terms?

They are third-party software. Under clauses 3.20 to 3.24 of the General Terms and Conditions the customer must comply with the licensor's terms whether or not they were brought to its attention, and a breach can require blueAPACHE to terminate that part of the service without liability. Under clause 13.7 the customer must be able to prove its licences within 5 Business Days of a request.

Is emPOWER Collaboration within blueAPACHE's ISO 27001 scope?

emPOWER Voice Carriage Services and emPOWER Unified Communications are both listed as in-scope services on certificate 202507-118, valid from 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2028. emPOWER Mobile Services, which has its own Schedule 8, is not listed on the certificate.

Source

Origin page: https://www.blueapache.com/empower-services/collaboration/

Knowledge Base