Background
Bizerba SE & Co. KG, based in Germany, is a leading provider and an acknowledged worldwide specialist in industrial food weighing, slicing and labelling technologies and solutions. Founded in 1866 by Andreas Bizer in Balingen, Bizerba remains a family-owned business and now has around 4,500 employees and 120 subsidiaries around the world. The company has production facilities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, China and the USA, as well as a global network of sales and service locations.
For more information, visit the Bizerba website.
Objectives
Bizerba’s communications network consisted primarily of Microsoft Skype for Business and Alcatel-Lucent PBXs in 71 different locations, as well as a variety of local PBX systems. As part of its drive to standardize its network technologies and improve communication between geographically dispersed employees, the company decided to adopt one unified telephony infrastructure worldwide.
The right solution for Bizerba would need to offer reliable voice and video calling for employees based in all of the company’s locations, as well as being highly secure to provide protection against potential cyberattacks.
Bizerba was also keen to source a future-proof solution with a continually evolving feature set that would cover its networking and traffic needs for many years to come, while reducing communications and maintenance costs at the same time.
Challenges
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Standardize network technologies and improve communication between geographically dispersed employees
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Deploy one unified communications platform for all employee and customer interactions
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Significantly reduce global communications and maintenance costs
"Thanks to AudioCodes’ SBCs, Bizerba now has a state-of-the-art infrastructure for leveraging the power of Microsoft Teams, enabling our employees to communicate effectively with each other and with our customers, no matter where they are.”
AudioCodes' Microsoft-Certified Virtual Session Border Controllers
As a first step, to reach its overall unified communications goals, Bizerba switched its employees over to Microsoft Teams, having been impressed by the platform’s productivity-focused instant messaging, online collaboration and voice and video calling functionality.
Next, with the assistance of AudioCodes’ partners binder Systemhaus GmbH and TOPAS electronic AG, Bizerba turned its attention to upgrading its communications network by replacing all on-premises PBX systems with cloud solutions.
The implementation process itself was exceptionally smooth. AudioCodes Mediant Virtual Edition (VE) session border controllers were deployed in the Microsoft Azure cloud to create a parallel infrastructure, enabling users to make and receive calls through either the legacy PBXs or Microsoft Teams during the transition period. This meant that Bizerba could move their users over to Microsoft Teams one by one, and at their own pace, without incurring any downtime.
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Mediant VE/SE SBC
Scalable solution for enterprises and service providers looking to virtualize their infrastructure and harmonize their datacenters on commodity server hardware.
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One Voice Operations Center
AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center (OVOC) is a web-based voice network management solution that combines management of voice network devices and elements and quality of experience monitoring into a single, intuitive web-based interface.
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Results
By selecting AudioCodes’ Azure-based Mediant VE session border controllers, Bizerba acquired a solid, reliable and secure infrastructure for its Microsoft Teams voice platform.
The company’s employees, regardless of where they are located, can now enjoy all the productivity-boosting benefits of Microsoft Teams, with just one channel for voice and video calling, instant messaging and content sharing. As a result of Microsoft Teams’ inherent flexibility and adaptability, Bizerba has also been able to seamlessly integrate additional services into its new unified communications solution, such as call center platforms and voicemail functionality.
Looking ahead, Bizerba is already planning to migrate the remainder of its current AudioCodes hardware-based SBCs to virtual, cloud-based versions, and is also considering deploying AudioCodes’ One Voice Operations Center (OVOC) voice network management solution to oversee all its network elements.
“Migrating from a classic PBX infrastructure to a cloudbased one is a critical and sometimes very sensitive endeavor,” said Maximilian Burghardt, Teamlead Network & Communication at Bizerba. “Thanks to AudioCodes’ SBCs, Bizerba now has a state-of-the-art infrastructure for leveraging the power of Microsoft Teams, enabling our employees to communicate effectively with each other and with our customers, no matter where they are.”
