Background
Founded in 1911, EMC Insurance Companies is among the top 60 property/casualty organizations in the United States based on net written premium, and is one of the largest in Iowa. Today, EMC employs more than 2,400 employees and 19 locations across the U.S.
For more information about EMC, visit the company website.
As one would expect for a large organization like EMC, voice communication is a critical part of the business. With SIP trunk connections from AT&T running into two redundant data centers, along with Cisco CUCM and Microsoft Teams unified communications solutions, the company had a working setup that ensured a reliable service for its employees and customers alike.
Challenges
Like many organizations worldwide, over the past few years EMC had begun to migrate many of its workloads to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud to benefit from the cost-effectiveness, ease of deployment and operational simplicity that AWS offers. The next logical step was to do the same with its voice infrastructure. To realize the full benefits of the cloud, EMC wanted a reliable voice connectivity solution that could be delivered in a managed services model with pay-per-use pricing, in line with the other AWS services it was consuming.
Challenges
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Smooth migration of voice infrastructure to AWS public cloud
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Managed SBC solution with pay-as-you-go pricing
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Interoperability with Microsoft Teams and Amazon Chime Voice Connector
“Deciding on the AudioCodes Virtual Edition SBC pay-as-you-go metered solution with Amazon Chime Voice Connector really didn’t require much second thought. The solution has provided EMC with fast and easy 32% cost savings, cloud managed services, and always-on cloud connectivity.”
Solution
In conjunction with the AWS team, EMC decided to adopt an innovative and unique solution to meet its needs. The solution is built around the Amazon Chime Connector SIP trunk service combined with the AudioCodes Mediant Virtualized Edition session border controller (VE SBC) as a metered, pay-as-you-go solution.
The Mediant VE SBC operates as a native AWS application, running as another cloud workload with the inherent benefits that AWS offers, such as scalability and resiliency. It is also unique in the market with its pay-as-you-go pricing, in line with Amazon Chime Voice Connector’s per-minute pricing model. There are no up-front costs involved and customers pay only for the minutes consumed.
Like all members of the AudioCodes Mediant SBC family, the Mediant VE offers vast, field-proven SIP interoperability ensuring seamless connectivity with virtually any SIP-based voice platform or network, including the Cisco CUCM unified communications solution used by EMC and Amazon Chime Voice Connector SIP trunks. It was also one of the first SBC solutions to be certified for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing, which has enabled EMC to offer flexible voice calling for its Teams users.
Since it is available on AWS Marketplace, deployment times for the Mediant VE SBC are dramatically reduced. Furthermore, AudioCodes’ intuitive configuration wizard tool simplifies setting up connections with Amazon Chime Voice Connector SIP trunks.
EMC deployed both the VE SBCs and Amazon Chime Voice Connector across multiple availability zones, providing high availability for incoming and outgoing calls.
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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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Results
The joint solution provided by AWS and AudioCodes covers all the bases as far as EMC is concerned:
- Estimated savings of 32% in communications costs
- A fully managed service reducing operational complexity and improving agility
- High availability and disaster recovery built in to the solution at several levels
- Seamless voice connectivity between all of EMC’s voice platforms and networks
“Deciding on the AudioCodes Virtual Edition SBC pay-as-you-go metered solution with Amazon Chime Voice Connector really didn’t require much second thought,” explained Paul Potts, Network Systems Analyst II at EMC Insurance Companies. “The solution has provided EMC with fast and easy 32% cost savings, cloud managed services, and always-on cloud connectivity.”
