Migrations · Metaswitch
From Metaswitch to Thirdlane: a roadmap you can plan around.
Metaswitch was acquired by Microsoft in 2020 and absorbed into the Azure for Operators portfolio. For service providers running MaX UC and CommPortal, the technology hasn’t gone away — but the strategic priority has shifted, and so has the rate of innovation visible to partners. Operators we talk to are quietly looking for somewhere to land.
Thirdlane is an independent vendor focused exclusively on channel-led service providers and MSPs. The product roadmap is owned by people who answer to operators, not to a hyperscaler’s broader portfolio strategy.
Plan your move if…
The platform isn’t going away tomorrow, and that’s exactly the trap. Migration windows close quietly. Two or more of these usually means it’s time to put a plan on a slide.
- Roadmap visibility for MaX UC and CommPortal has narrowed since the 2020 Microsoft acquisition.
- The strategic direction you’re hearing is “Operator Connect / Teams Phone,” which doesn’t fit your channel motion.
- CFS / MAS / SMS renewal economics are getting harder to defend internally.
- Your customers are asking for AI voice intelligence, omnichannel contact center, or native WhatsApp Business — and you can’t get a delivery date you trust.
- Your OSS / BSS team hasn’t gotten a roadmap commitment they can plan against in 18 months or more.
- Your MaX UC client lineage needs replacement regardless — you’re going to ship a new app to your subscribers anyway.
- You’re seeing more Microsoft account-team conversations than Metaswitch product-team conversations.
What changes, what doesn’t
Stays the same
Multi-tenant operating model. Per-tenant isolation. Reseller-style branding. DIDs/E.911 plumbing. STIR/SHAKEN. Integrated SBC. CDR pipelines feeding existing OSS/BSS. Geographic redundancy via clustering. Carrier-grade telephony core.
Gets better
One Configuration Manager replacing the operational sprawl across CFS / MAS / SMS / CommPortal. Branded Connect apps under your brand on iOS/Android. Built-in CRM, AI voice intelligence, omnichannel contact center, and native Meta WABA — all in-platform. OIDC SSO across every surface. Roadmap that’s independent of a hyperscaler portfolio.
Mapping table
| Area | Metaswitch | Thirdlane |
|---|---|---|
| Tenancy model | Multi-tenant carrier-grade core (MaX UC / CommPortal). Reseller / business-group hierarchy. | Tenant ↔ user model with first-class Multi-Site Enterprise grouping for chain customers. Reseller branding via per-tenant white-label. |
| Subscriber footprint | CommPortal subscribers, business groups, hunt groups, MLHGs. | Tenant extensions, ring groups, Contact Center queues. Bulk migration via REST API + CSV import. |
| UC client | MaX UC Desktop / Mobile / Meeting. | Connect: voice, video, chat, presence, file sharing, white-labeled per tenant on app stores under your brand. |
| Phones | Per-vendor provisioning via Metaswitch CFS configuration / partner DMS. | Phone Models management with per-model templates, multiple provisioning protocols, External Provisioning to retain a customer-managed DMS, S3 transport. |
| Recordings | Recording via partner integrations. | S3-compatible storage across seven providers (AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Cloudflare R2, MinIO, Garage). Per-tenant BYOS for compliance-bound customers. |
| Routing & dialplan | CFS routing, business-group dial plans, custom translations. | Per-tenant dial plans with country-aware E.164 normalization (51 pre-configured plans), per-user/per-trunk overrides, Routing Conditions for schedule/office-mode logic, default route fallback. |
| Identity | Partial SSO via partner integrations. | OIDC SSO with MFA across Configuration Manager, User Portal, and Connect. Pre-named: Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, Keycloak, Authentik, Zoho. Plus any OIDC IdP. |
| High availability | Geographically redundant CFS / MAS / SMS, carrier-grade failover. | Active/active and active/passive clustering with optional geo-redundancy. Service locations, role-separated management/proxy/PBX servers, tiered config sync, real-time topology view. |
| OSS/BSS | CDR streams, NFM/NPS APIs, partner OSS integrations. | OpenAPI 3.1 REST APIs (Organization, CRM, system management, telephony operations) plus webhooks. Separate reporting connection for OSS/BSS reads. |
| Roadmap predictability | Roadmap consolidating inside Microsoft’s Azure for Operators portfolio. | Independent vendor focused exclusively on the channel-led MSP / UCaaS market. Frequent point releases on a public 16.x line. |
How a migration runs
Same playbook as our other carrier-grade migrations — inventory, parallel deployment, per-tenant cutover, archival of the legacy platform. The BroadWorks playbook walks through the four phases in detail; the shape is identical for Metaswitch.
We don’t flip switches. Subscribers move on a schedule the operator controls, and Metaswitch stays live until the last tenant has been comfortable on Thirdlane long enough to decommission.
Talk through your inventory
Send us a redacted business-group / subscriber summary, recording footprint, and a list of the Metaswitch components currently in production. We’ll come back with a per-tenant migration shape and a TCO across three years.
Metaswitch is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Mentions are for compatibility/migration context only.