Microsoft Teams Insider Scaling Microsoft Teams Phone and Teams Rooms at BAE Systems with Andrew Wigmore
Feb 17, 2026
Andrew Wigmore, Teams Product Owner at BAE Systems with a 40-year career, leads Teams telephony and Rooms across a massive global estate. He recounts migrating tens of thousands of numbers in one morning. He discusses Operator Connect across 11 countries, managing 180 cloud-managed meeting spaces, and the cultural shift from on-premises systems to evergreen cloud services.
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45,000-Number Cutover In One Morning
- BAE migrated from Skype to Teams with a large pilot of 3,500 and then moved 45,000 phone numbers into Teams during one high-pressure Friday morning.
- The migration required PowerShell scripting and coordination but resulted in no user-impact incidents.
Lockdown Sparked A Billion-Minute Year
- During lockdown BAE discovered remote work scaled massively after upgrading VPN capacity, driving a billion Skype minutes in a year.
- That surge accelerated their move to Microsoft Teams Rooms and cloud-managed conferencing.
Cloud Means Rethinking Export And Residency
- Moving a defence firm to cloud requires rethinking policies around security, export control, and data residency.
- Cloud is 'somebody else's computer' so teams must educate staff on where data lives and export implications.