Transforming a 30-site PBX estate into a scalable Microsoft Teams platform
Customer Overview
Konekt (Formerly Nuvias UC) partnered with a leading German media group at a pivotal moment in their telephony and workplace transformation journey.
The customer is a large, Germany-based media organisation operating across multiple sectors, including newspapers, television and radio production, as well as print and logistics services. With a distributed structure and numerous subsidiaries, the company manages a complex IT and communications landscape.
The challenge
One of the main challenges was organisational. Management initially doubted whether Microsoft Teams Phone System could meet the requirements, but a proof of concept demonstrated its capabilities.
Technically, the environment was highly fragmented, with 30 sites each operating their own PBX systems, resulting in high overhead and limited flexibility. Ensuring business continuity required a phased migration.
Additional complexity came from number porting and coordination with multiple providers, making a controlled, gradual transition necessary.
What Konekt did
To address the challenges, a centralised telephony architecture was introduced, built around a data center– hosted SBC and a central SIP trunk. This enabled existing PBX systems to be connected first, allowing users to be migrated gradually to a Microsoft Teams Phone System without disrupting operations.
The phased approach, combined with a flexible monthly post-pay model, ensured smooth progress despite dependencies such as number porting and coordination with multiple stakeholders.
The outcome
Since autumn 2022, the organisation has been steadily transitioning to the new platform, with legacy systems being decommissioned step by step. The new setup significantly improves scalability, making it easy to integrate newly acquired companies.
Beyond telephony, the project also enhanced internal processes for managing and assigning phone numbers, increasing overall efficiency and governance.
By leveraging existing investments in Microsoft Teams and introducing a centralised architecture, the customer successfully transformed a fragmented and outdated telephony landscape into a modern, scalable solution. The phased migration approach ensured business continuity throughout the process, while the new platform provides a solid foundation for future growth.
This provided a scalable foundation for growth while reducing operational complexity across the organisation.
