Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition in now available

Back in December 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of (among other things) Cloud-PBX. This was in effect only available for US customers, where O365 has native support for dial-in and dial-out. Or for customers which already have a Skype for Business on premises in hybrid mode.

To speed up the process of offering Cloud-PBX to countries where O365 does not yet have native dialing capabilities, and/or do not have their own on premises Skype for Business deployment, Microsoft have developed the Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition.

The Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition (CCE) is a collection of VM's through which you may connect O365 to your local PBX or SIP trunk, and thus have users in O365 have Enterprise Voice capability.

The CCE has been released for general availability as of today (Monday April 11 - 9A,M,)

• The installation bits can be downloaded from their website (internet access is required on the server where the CCE will be installed): http://aka.ms/getcce
• Plan for your deployment reading this guide: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt605227.aspx
• Follow these instructions https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt605228.aspx (link was not live at the time this post was written, but should be updated soon)

If you already have a Local Skype for Business deployment in hybrid mode (or are about to turn on the hybrid feature), you do not need to deploy the CCE as you may use the hybrid deployment in the same way. In fact, you can't have both a hybrid deployment and a CCE running of the same tenant.