Lærdal Medical's Teams phone system got a new life when Ctelo took over the Asian part. – Ctelo helps us with telephony in our offices in China and with other challenges, says telecommunications technician Thomas Laland at Lærdal Medical.
Most people know Lærdal Medical better than they think. Many have practiced heart massage and mouth-to-mouth breathing on a doll. Those dolls are made by Lærdal Medical, among activities in other health areas, like running online programs for certification of nurses.
Today Lærdal Medical have 25 offices worldwide, and for several years their phone systems were operated by an external consultant. A lot was running well when the consultant left, but the China and Hong Kong offices were left with some challenges. For instance, all phone lines depended on local base stations.
Global Cloud Service
– First our phone systems were local, but we switched to Teams telephony three or four years ago. In USA, with our three offices, Teams telephony is supported and operated by Microsoft. This is not a service they have in every country, and we need to use other suppliers. In China we use Ctelo, telecommunications technician Thomas Laland at Lærdal Medical says.
Microsoft Teams is a global cloud service that makes it easier for international companies to establish a uniform phone solution at all locations. Still challenges such as time zones and countries with strict local telecom regulations cannot be escaped. China is a good example. It´s not possible to use a phone solution operated from outside their borders, and Lærdal Medical continues to have physical devices there. Other examples of countries that require such solutions are Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
Ctelo took over
– We no longer have phone systems operated internally. China is the only one left. Ctelo took charge of the solution when our consultant quit. When they came in, there were still some connection points that needed handling, Laland says.
The first thing was to set up the devices to be operated from the Ctelo Operations Center, which also takes care of the global Ctelo Business Phone cloud service. Those individual boxes then became part of our cloud solution. The whole system is backed up, updated, and monitored under the same regime. This makes it easy for Ctelo to diagnose and solve problematic situations.
Some downtime
– Before Ctelo took over, the system had some downtime in China. When they came in a year and a half ago, they moved our phone activity into their cloud solution. Later there was some downtime for other reasons, but Ctelo have assisted with troubleshooting and have been an important part to solve complex problems. In addition, there were various challenges with Teams that Ctelo also have fixed, Laland says.
A company with 25 offices all over the world will always have various challenges to deal with of technical nature. Ctelo deals with some of those as well.
– For us, the advantage in everyday life is that we have a stable system which is monitored, together with good support from Ctelo if something happens, Laland concludes.