In last week’s post, we showed you why the highly scalable AudioCodes Mediant Cloud Edition (CE) session border controller is the perfect solution for enterprises who are unsure of exactly how much SBC traffic they should budget for when designing their communications infrastructure. Check out how one service provider leveraged the Mediant CE’s unparalleled flexibility to create an innovative business communications solution for Microsoft Teams.
The Customer
Founded in Norway in 2016, blinQ is a system integrator, cloud service provider and reseller with a strong presence in cloud communication and collaboration solutions. Fueled by a successful track record with more than 250 satisfied corporate customers, blinQ smashed through the 100 million Norwegian Krone barrier during their third full year of operation. Close alliances with selected partners, such as Tendfor AB, have been a vital element in blinQ’s continued growth.
The Challenge
Having built a deserved reputation for delivering cutting-edge solutions, blinQ saw an opportunity to offer voice connectivity as a managed service. In particular, with the growing popularity of Microsoft Teams, they identified the need for an end-to-end service for customers of any size, delivered entirely from the cloud on a “Bring Your Own Carrier” basis. They also wanted to add additional enterprise voice and contact center features to complement the native telephony functionality offered by Teams. The whole solution was to be hosted in the Azure cloud to ensure agility, simplicity and high scalability.
The Solution
blinQ’s Teams voice connectivity solution was built around the AudioCodes Mediant Cloud Edition (CE) session border controller (SBC). The Mediant CE SBC – which, like all AudioCodes SBCs, is certified by Microsoft for Teams Direct Routing – is a cloud-native SBC solution built on a micro-services architecture that offers dynamic elasticity and virtually unlimited scalability. It also supports multi-tenancy, enabling blinQ to service multiple Teams customers cost-effectively using the same SBC instance in Azure.
Using the Mediant CE’s dedicated Stack Manager (for monitoring and scaling SBC resources) and Azure deployment in West Europe Zones 1 and 2, the AudioCodes Direct Routing SBC solution was delivered with a high availability design employing two media servers and redundancy between the dual cloud SBCs. If one zone goes down, the system remains up and running with no loss of connection or calls, offering unparalleled uptime.
Thanks to AudioCodes’ vast interoperability capabilities, the Mediant CE SBC can communicate seamlessly with virtually any service provider or SIP trunk network, meaning that blinQ’s customers can retain their existing carrier service.
blinQ used Tendfor’s multi-tenant Azure platform to enhance their telephony service with call routing, auto-attendant and contact center functionality, all running natively in Teams. Tendfor Teams is the first-to-market all-Microsoft cloud platform for true Teams telephony, exclusively utilizing the new Microsoft Graph Cloud Communications APIs for call handling. This potent cocktail essentially turns any Teams environment into a unified communications and collaboration integrated state-of-the-art PBX replacement.
The Results
The innovative solution designed by blinQ had already created a real buzz with several successful POC trials when they landed their first live customer – the Norwegian Agriculture Agency. The Agency wanted to migrate from their existing communications solution, based on Skype for Business, to Microsoft Teams with carrier-independent call routing. Thanks to blinQ’s multi-tenant Direct Routing offering based on the AudioCodes CE SBC, and the Teams contact center solution powered by Tendfor, the Agency was good to go in no time at all.
“Our hosted Teams service is the first of its kind in the market. AudioCodes’ Mediant CE SBC enabled us to build a cloud-native voice solution, leveraging the elasticity and scalability of Azure along with full Teams Direct Routing support.”
Pål Gran, CEO, blinQ
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