CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL
TUI SUISSE LTD
Name
TUI Suisse Ltd
Sector
Tourism
Business locations
62
Employees
approx. 500
Website
Customer since
2006
Products and services purchased
Key Account Manager
Peter Horvath:
peter.horvath@upc.ch
Initial situation
TUI Suisse Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the TUI Group, the global leader among tourism groups with its headquarters in Hannover. Besides the core brand TUI, the airtours brand also belongs to the company. TUI Suisse is an exclusive marketer of hotel brands in Switzerland, such as Robinson or TUI BLUE, as well as the study and adventure trips for the Gebeco, Dr. Tigges and goXplore brands. Sales take place through their 62 travel agencies, 450 partner agencies and tui.ch, the online portal.
UPC Business has been connecting all TUI locations in Switzerland since 2006. The cooperation was even continued when, in 2012, the company outsourced responsibility for the operation of the communications infrastructure to an international IT outsourcing provider. Outsourcing did not bring the expected added benefit, and so in 2017 the IT management decided to invite tenders for a comprehensive solution package comprised of WAN, Internet, Voice, Managed LAN/WLAN and PBX connection. Besides UPC Business, two other large providers were able to make offers.
Regarding the value for money, which was important to the customer, two offers were in the lead, including that of UPC Business. A pivotal reason the contract was awarded to UPC Business was the consistently positive experience during prior collaboration. The services were put into operation during the first half of 2018.
Solution
For cost reasons, the SDSL connections for the existing WAN service were replaced by the UPC BBCS service, based on VDSL connections. The bandwidths for Business VPN are 50/5 Mbit/s for the branch locations and 300/300 Mbit/s in the two data centres in Zurich (one at the headquarters, the other externally at EveryWare). These are connected to each other via GigaClass Services (1 Gbit/s).
In the external data centre there is an IP telephone system with 400 channels which is connected to the UPC Business telephony platform via an SIP trunk. The company network is also used for telephony. Quality of Service (QoS) ensures top voice quality. The complex VoIP service is integrated into the group’s ICT system and operated by the customer. Calls within the Swiss company network are free, and outgoing external connections are billed by the minute.
In the branch locations, the employees use Thin Clients with Citrix technology for access to the data centre of the company headquarters in Hannover, and tablets for consulting. The branches’ local networks are managed by UPC Business and some are equipped with Wireless Access Points (WLAN).
The primary Internet service is made available by the company in Hannover and distributed through the international backbone. In addition, UPC Business provides a dedicated Internet service in Switzerland.
With this solution, TUI Suisse was able to significantly improve the value for money for its network services and establish an optimal link between the IT operations in Switzerland and the group’s IT system.
Extra miles
The migration from Business VPN to the BBCS platform was a first for UPC Business in such dimensions. The product management team had to redesign operation of the service. This was the central challenge of the project, though the customer did not notice it.
The TUI Group planned a group-wide migration to a modern VoIP platform, which, however, was not available until later in the schedule. So to ensure that the individual branches could still profit from the VoIP service from the very beginning, UPC Business made a temporary Virtual PBX available over HFC or VDSL connections.
Correct as of: December 2019