We transformed a legacy challenge into a communications system that’s easy to manage and aligned to how people work.
Published at
7 May 2026
From a financial perspective, moving from our legacy on-premise system to a cloud-hosted, integrated Teams set up, we’ve been able to realise around a 66% reduction in our annual telephony costs.
Flexible comms
Simpler management
Less complexity
Savings across departments
The transformation has helped the university get more value from its technology investments. Some departments are already benefiting from comms cost reductions.
We've helped the University of Glasgow cut down costs and simplify its tech setup by moving to Microsoft Teams.
Learn more about our ongoing relationship with the university and how our cloud services in Glasgow supported their latest project.
Speakers:
Dave Anderson - Director for Relationship Management and Engagement, University of Glasgow
Steven Jack - IT Specialist (retired), University of Glasgow
Courtney Brown - Project Manager, Nasstar
Mark Jannar-Burgess - Microsoft UC Consultant, Nasstar
Dave: The university prides itself on student experience. Making staff available to students. Good communication is invisible and seamless. What we've looked to provide is something that makes communication happen without people thinking about it and without presenting barriers.
We have a large team across the university. Glasgow as a university has been here for 575 years. The telephony system has evolved over the last 50 or 60 years. We have around 8,000 extension numbers. The scale of the estate shouldn't really be underestimated; huge complex environment from a physical perspective.
Fundamentally, the telephony system hadn't changed from a user perspective over the 30 years that I've been at the university.
Steve: Microsoft Teams was really something that senior management were really keen on. We weren't at that point experts in the Microsoft technology either.
Dave: Went to market looking for tenders. At that point, we had our first engagement with Nasstar who presented a solution that met all of our requirements, was technically competent, and provided a service package on the back of that that gave us confidence that it would meet what we needed to deliver. It gave us reassurance that there would be some joint work between the university and Nasstar to make sure that the university got what it wanted, but wasn't sending a blank check to get there.
We were able to deliver essentially a new telephony platform without interrupting users, having a flexible technical lead and Mark Jenner Burgess from Nasstar, who was able to address some of the quite complex routing issues that our migration presented.
Mark was able to see the environment that we were operating in, to see the scale firsthand, understand the issues and work through them as we went. And Courtney's project management and understanding time pressures that Mark was facing, juggling Mark’s availability with the priorities of the project, and meeting the requirements for the university to make sure that the university was getting what we needed and that project momentum was maintained.
Courtney: I think there were like 160 odd actions. To have them all completed was a massive moment for us. Getting us to that completion point. And seeing the relationship and friendship that we've been able to build over the last few months has been outstanding.
Dave: From a financial perspective, moving from our legacy on-premise system to a cloud-hosted integrated Teams setup where the university already had Teams licenses, we didn't have additional license costs. We've been able to realize around 66% reduction in our annual telephony costs. Maybe in the future there will be something else and I'm sure we will go back to Nasstar in terms of support as well.
Mark: I really enjoyed the project. Obviously, it's been great working with you folks. It was really worthwhile, and I'm glad Nasstar delivered a job for you.
Steve: We all got on really well. We're all kind of really friendly to each other.
Mark: I think the thing was it was communicating, working as a team, having the integrity to call out the issues that arise, and the challenges, and just working together and communicating to bring the project together.
Dave: We have Nasstar at the end of a phone when we need them. The journey has been successful because of the relationships that we've established and a shared ambition to deliver the best for the university.
