How the 'Six-Cloud Wall' creates calling barriers between organizations - and how to finally bridge the cloud divide.
In the modern enterprise, Microsoft Teams has become the dominant player in collaboration. But for those operating in the Federal, Defense, or Government-contracting sectors, there is a frustrating reality that most people don't see until it’s too late: Microsoft Teams is not one cloud.
While we call it all "Teams," Microsoft operates a series of isolated cloud environments, Commercial, GCC, GCC High, and DoD, separated by massive architectural and security moats. For an IT specialist, this means that even though everyone is technically "on Teams," a civilian contractor and a DoD agency might as well be operating on two completely separate, restricted networks. Traditional tools usually fail to bridge these gaps, leaving high-stakes meetings stranded at the cloud border.
The Six-Cloud Wall
Microsoft operates six logically segregated cloud environments to meet varying security, data residency, and compliance requirements:
These environments were built to stay apart. While this isolation is a "feature" for security, it can be a "bug" for collaboration. Because of these boundaries, calling between these clouds can be challenging, and in many cases, simply not possible.
To understand how to bridge this gap, we first must look at the two primary ways organizations connect their professional video infrastructure to the Teams world.
|
Method |
Cloud Video Interop (CVI) |
|
|
What it is |
A Microsoft-certified gateway service that allows SIP devices to join Teams meetings hosted primarily within the same cloud environment. |
A standards-based interoperability suite that bridges SIP devices to Teams across all boundaries. |
|
Primary Use Case |
Internal meetings and same-cloud collaboration (e.g., Commercial to Commercial). |
Internal meetings, high-stakes, cross-tenant, and cross-cloud collaboration (e.g., Civilian to GCC-H/DoD). |
|
Directional Flexibility |
Inbound Only (Host-dependent) |
Any Direction (Host-Agnostic) |
|
Deployment |
Typically cloud-based (SaaS) and tied to the meeting organizer’s tenant. |
Flexible Deployment: Available as a fully managed Cloud service, Private Cloud, or On-Premises' for maximum data residency. |
The era of "one-way" or "in-tenant" interoperability is over. In a world where federal missions increasingly span multiple agencies, security tiers, and private-sector partners, your technology cannot afford to be the bottleneck.
If your organization is tired of the "Join Anxiety" that comes with cross-cloud invitations, or if you’ve realized that standard CVI stops exactly where your most important work begins, it’s time to shift your strategy. Synergy SKY CONNECT doesn’t just "bridge" a meeting; it provides directional certainty. By making your SIP endpoints host-agnostic and truly cross-cloud capable, whether deployed in the cloud, on-prem, or in a private environment, we ensure that your team can focus on the mission, not the architecture.
One License. Any Meeting. No Exceptions.
While Synergy SKY CONNECT is the only solution designed to scale the "Six-Cloud Wall" of Microsoft Teams, we didn't stop there. We believe your professional room systems should work with every platform your partners use.
With a single Synergy SKY license, you get the same Universal One-Touch Join, Interoperability, and Content Sharing for:
Consolidate your workflow. Eliminate the workarounds. Just press the green button.