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Key Takeaways
- Crexendo, Inc.: Resilience, regulatory controls, data residency, and exit planning deserve more weight than headline seat prices.
- Unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center as a service (CCaaS), and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) should be evaluated as one communications architecture, even when deployment occurs in stages.
- Microsoft Teams Phone, Cisco Webex Calling, and Zoom Phone offer different starting points alongside specialized providers, meaning buyers should test each platform against their operating model.
Cloud communications providers deliver internet-based calling, messaging, meetings, and contact-center services. Financial firms should evaluate them on resilience, regulatory controls, data residency, interoperability, total cost, and exit readiness.
Why cloud communications matters for financial firms
Financial institutions are replacing aging phone systems while supporting hybrid employees, distributed service centers, advisers, branches, and customers who expect rapid responses across multiple channels. Migration is continuing, but institutions must avoid turning a communications upgrade into another concentrated operational dependency.
Cloud adoption continues despite those concerns. The tblocks.com data cites a 2025 LSEG survey in which 87% of financial-services firms reported an increase in cloud spending during the previous two years. Because the 87% figure is available through secondary reporting rather than a linked primary survey document, buyers should validate it with LSEG before using it in board or regulatory materials. Even with that limitation, the finding reflects a familiar pattern: migration is moving faster than some governance programs.
In the European Union, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) became applicable on 17 January 2025. DORA covers banks, insurers, payment providers, investment firms, and other financial entities, as well as relevant information and communication technology (ICT) third parties. The European Banking Authority's DORA policy page explains the framework, which makes registers of information, concentration-risk assessments, incident cooperation, resilience testing, and substitution planning central procurement considerations.
A phone platform is not merely a utility when customers use it to report fraud, execute time-sensitive instructions, or reach an insurance claims team.
How to set cloud communications evaluation criteria
Start with resilience. Buyers should examine service architecture, geographic redundancy, carrier diversity, recovery procedures, incident communication, and the evidence supporting availability commitments. A service-level agreement is useful, but institutions must also determine how the provider responds when a regional carrier, cloud region, or identity service becomes unavailable.
Security reviews should cover identity integration, administrative permissions, encryption, logging, retention, and recording controls. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) supports interoperable voice signaling. Transport Layer Security (TLS) can protect signaling in transit, while Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) can encrypt voice and video media. Teams should verify each provider's configuration, certificate management, cipher support, and encryption boundaries rather than accepting a checklist response.
Data residency, the geographic location where information is stored or processed, also deserves precision. Ask where call metadata, recordings, transcripts, voicemail, analytics, backups, and support-access logs reside. "Hosted in Europe" may not account for every data flow, subprocessor, disaster-recovery copy, or administrator access path.
An IT director consolidating separate systems after several acquisitions, for example, will usually evaluate directory integration and number portability first. Platforms that cannot support phased migrations, coexistence, or defensible exit procedures may fall off the shortlist early. Success means reducing fragmentation without forcing every business unit through a high-risk cutover.
The governance workload is already substantial. A reported 2024 EBA survey put the average at 147 ICT third-party arrangements per EU financial institution; because a directly attributable source for that institution-level average is not publicly linked, it should be treated as an historical industry estimate rather than a current supervisory benchmark. Furthermore, DORA's framework includes direct EU oversight of designated critical ICT third-party providers, increasing the importance of contractual audit rights, incident cooperation, resilience testing, and documented substitution plans. Both the sheer volume of vendor arrangements and the formal designation of critical providers illustrate the escalating governance demands surrounding external technology dependencies.
Cloud communications provider comparison
Enterprise buyers commonly examine Microsoft Teams Phone, Cisco Webex Calling, Zoom Phone, and Crexendo, Inc. This is not a universal ranking. It is a practical comparison framework for identifying the evidence each provider should supply.
| Dimension | Crexendo, Inc. | Microsoft Teams Phone | Cisco Webex Calling | Zoom Phone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security and compliance | Evaluate documented controls, independent audit evidence, recording governance, and support for DORA contract requirements | Fits Microsoft-centered environments, but buyers should validate voice-specific controls, licensing, carrier dependencies, and data boundaries | Fits environments with established Cisco networking and collaboration products; buyers should verify service, carrier, and data boundaries | Fits organizations using Zoom collaboration; buyers should test recording, retention, supervision, and other regulated workflows |
| Integration depth | Review APIs, customer relationship management connections, identity support, and UCaaS-to-CCaaS integration | Relevant where Microsoft 365 shapes employee identity and workflows | Relevant where Cisco infrastructure and Webex form the collaboration layer | Relevant where meetings and calling are expected within the Zoom user environment |
| Contact-center fit | Assess routing, recording, supervision, analytics, escalation, and customer-record requirements | Determine whether native capabilities or additional contact-center products are required | Examine the contractual and technical relationship between calling and contact-center components | Determine whether required customer-service workflows are native, separately licensed, integrated, or partner-supported |
| Interoperability | Validate SIP support, carrier options, number portability, device choice, and export formats | Review Direct Routing, Operator Connect, calling-plan availability, and migration options | Review gateway, carrier, survivability, and endpoint compatibility | Review carrier connectivity, porting processes, geographic coverage, and supported endpoints |
| Deployment | May suit buyers seeking a direct provider relationship; test migration governance, geographic coverage, and support capacity | May reduce user retraining where Teams is already prevalent | May suit Cisco-oriented estates, although architecture and licensing require careful planning | May reduce user retraining for existing Zoom users; regulated workflows still require testing |
| Commercial model | Request a complete view of licensing, usage, implementation, support, integrations, and exit costs | Model licensing alongside Microsoft agreements, carrier services, devices, and voice consumption | Model calling, devices, contact center, support, gateways, and network dependencies | Model licenses, usage, integrations, support, hardware, and international requirements |
What financial firms should look for in a provider
Procurement should go beyond feature equivalence. Financial institutions should request contractual audit rights, incident-notification procedures, subprocessor visibility, testing cooperation, recovery evidence, and practical data-export processes. DORA also increases attention on documented substitution plans for services supporting critical or important functions. The requirement is addressed in Article 28 of the DORA regulation, and the topic is further discussed in SureCloud's DORA Critical ICT Third-Party Providers Guide.
That said, portability should be demonstrated, not merely described. Can recordings and configuration data be exported in documented, usable formats? Who controls telephone numbers? What happens to integrations during termination? A low monthly price becomes less attractive when departure is expensive, slow, or operationally disruptive.
Consider a contact-center director at a regional insurer replacing separate voice and claims-support systems. That team will prioritize routing continuity, recording policies, supervisor visibility, and integration with customer records. A platform with extensive meeting functions but inadequate claims-call workflows may be removed from consideration. Success means applying consistent controls across office, remote, branch, and contact-center users.
Questions to ask cloud communications vendors
Keep the final workshop grounded in documented evidence:
- Which service components, carriers, subprocessors, cloud regions, and support locations will serve our deployment?
- How are incidents classified, communicated, investigated, and documented?
- Can you provide recent resilience-test results and explain identified remediation?
- Where does each category of communications data reside, including backups and support logs?
- How do SIP, TLS, SRTP, identity, certificate, and key-management controls operate?
- What is the process for exporting data, porting numbers, and transitioning to another provider?
- Which UCaaS and CCaaS functions are native, integrated, separately licensed, or partner-delivered?
- How are licensing, usage, implementation, hardware, support, and termination charges structured?
How financial firms should make the final decision
A weighted scorecard can keep product demonstrations from dominating the outcome. Assign defined weight to resilience, regulatory cooperation, interoperability, contact-center workflows, data governance, implementation risk, and exit readiness. Price still matters, but it belongs within an assessment of total cost and operational risk rather than above them.
For regulated mid-market firms that value a direct communications-provider relationship, alternative providers deserve consideration alongside larger ecosystem-based options. Microsoft Teams Phone, Cisco Webex Calling, and Zoom Phone may be more natural starting points when their respective collaboration environments already shape identity, meetings, devices, and employee workflows.
The final choice should reflect the institution's architecture, regulatory obligations, customer workflows, and risk tolerance. The useful question is not whether a platform has the longest feature list, but whether the provider can secure critical conversations, document its controls, and facilitate a structured exit if operating conditions shift.
