A South African financial services organisation: from Edges to cloud media, on time

The organisation's contact centre already ran on Genesys Cloud CX, but its calls passed through two Edge Mini appliances in its own building, connected to a local carrier. Genesys has announced that its BYOC Premises Genesys Hardware Solution, which includes the Edge Mini, reaches end of support on 1 December 2026 and end of life on 1 June 2027, when existing deployments stop working. Failing hardware would no longer be replaced, so the organisation needed to move before the hardware, not the deadline, decided for it.

The move touched everything callers and staff depend on: every agent's phone, every public number, the carrier, and the link to Microsoft Teams that let agents and colleagues call each other. It had to happen without a gap in service, in an organisation whose customers expect to reach it when they call.

QVCCS was the Genesys Cloud CX specialist for a global systems integrator and Genesys reseller, working with the integrator's networking, carrier and Microsoft teams and the organisation's own IT staff. The engagement ran from November 2025 to March 2026. We followed Genesys's premises-to-hybrid media process and wrote it out as a migration runbook with an owner, a time and a test for every step, revised five times as the plan was agreed.

1. Firewall and network requirements for cloud media, certified site by site
2. Prerequisites: AppFoundry entitlements, Edges on the latest version, a Genesys readiness case
3. Maintenance window 1: make the organisation hybrid and prove nothing changed
4. A new cloud site, carrier trunks and test numbers, tested against Teams
5. Maintenance window 2: move every phone and number to cloud media
6. Hypercare, warranty support and the Edges released for retirement

The first maintenance window changed the platform without changing the service. We added BYOC Cloud to the organisation through the AppFoundry, checked that Genesys had created the Genesys Cloud Hybrid Media Group, the new cloud phone trunks and the cloud core site, and moved both Edges into the hybrid group. The organisation's own team then confirmed that live numbers, call flows, queues and agents still worked exactly as before on the premises carrier.

With the organisation hybrid, we built the cloud side alongside the live service: a new location and site using the Africa (Cape Town) media region, so voice stays close to callers and agents even though the core organisation is hosted in Dublin, and the new carrier's SIP trunk over TLS, with dial plans and outbound routes for emergency, national and international calls. Five test numbers on the new trunk let the team prove inbound and outbound calling, transfers and calls to and from Microsoft Teams from the office, without touching a live number.

Agents now use WebRTC phones on a cloud site served from the Cape Town media region, with persistent connections so calls connect faster. All public numbers run on the new carrier's BYOC Cloud trunk. Microsoft Teams moved from an on-premises Direct Routing connection to Operator Connect, so calls between agents in Genesys Cloud and colleagues in Teams travel over the carrier's network with no session border controller of the organisation's own to maintain.

Testing followed a written pack covering outbound caller ID, calls on behalf of a queue, inbound calls to queues and users, internal calls, transfers and conferences, and calls in both directions between Genesys Cloud and Teams. When calls to some mobile numbers failed in testing, SIP traces from Genesys Cloud showed the cause lay in the carrier's routing plan, and the carrier corrected it once it had the traces.

The second maintenance window ran on the evening of 23 March 2026. In a single evening window the team switched every WebRTC phone to the cloud site, moved the live numbers to the new carrier, tested call flows and queues, and confirmed Teams calling in both directions. The organisation went live exactly as planned, on the planned dates, with no slippage, followed by hypercare and two weeks of warranty support.

The organisation is off hardware Genesys is retiring, more than eight months before its end of support, with its contact centre running on cloud media and its Edges no longer carrying a single call. No agent changed how they work: the same Genesys Cloud CX, the same flows and queues, and phones that now connect through the cloud.

• Two Edge Mini appliances freed for retirement ahead of Genesys's end of support
• Organisation made hybrid in one window, with live service unchanged
• Every phone and number moved to cloud media in a second window
• Cape Town media region for a Dublin-hosted organisation
• Teams moved from Direct Routing to Operator Connect
• Live exactly as planned, on the planned dates