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Arup

Case Study

Industry: Professional Services
Company size: 15,000+ employees
 

Arup uses Pexip to scale its video capacity and bridge its video conferencing systems

 

ARUP logo-2

About Arup

Arup is a world-class firm of designers, planners, engineers, architects, consultants, and technical specialists, working across every aspect of design and engineering. For over seven decades, Arup has been at the forefront of the most ambitious and challenging building projects — from concert halls to national stadiums, renewable energy to driverless cars.

Pexip services in use

In Summary

 

Challenges 

  • Need for interoperability between Skype for Business and in-office infrastructure in more than 400 meeting rooms around the globe

  • Need for a video conferencing solution that allows external clients on other platforms to connect to Skype for Business

 

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Pexip Solutions

  • Adoption of the Pexip Infinity platform
  • Integration with existing Cisco hardware
  • Interoperability with Skype for Business / Microsoft Teams

 

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Results

  • Ensured that 400 traditional video conferencing rooms, as well as external clients on other platforms, can seamlessly connect to Skype for Business (and now Teams) meetings via the Pexip interoperability gateway

  • Scalable system means less up-front capital expenditures, with the ability to handle larger meetings when required

Challenges

In the field of design, engineering, and building planning, collaboration is fundamental to ensure project success. For Arup, this means that they have approximately 400 video-enabled meeting rooms to connect their global workforce.  

 These meeting rooms predominantly use legacy video conferencing infrastructure from Cisco and Tandberg. But, with the amount of team collaboration Arup requires, the company ran into challenges with capacity and meeting sizes. 

 “When we look at our traditional bridging system for audio and video, it's very restricted,” says Chris Ellen, Unified Communications Service Leader at Arup. “If you wanted multiple meetings to run at the same time, we started having to reduce the number of people that could be in a meeting — and sometimes you had to turn staff away.” 

 

 

Why Pexip?

Arup chose Pexip Infinity, a self-hosted video conferencing solution, due to the ease of use, speed of deployment, and seamless interoperability with existing systems. But the most important factor for Arup was that Pexip worked in all video conferencing scenarios. There was no cap on number of participants or number of concurrent meetings: everyone could use Pexip at the same time.  

 “It’s very much an on-premises version of a Software as a Service consumption model, which worked really well for us,” says Chris. “So, as we grow with our usage, we don't have a massive upfront CapEx expenditure, but we could deploy that capacity in advance of needing it.”  

“From the trial that we started, we went into production within a few months based on the fact that [Pexip] always just worked.”
Chris Ellen, Unified Communications Service Leader at Arup

Results

“Today, Pexip provides that great interoperable gateway between the two systems we use internally,” says Chris.  

 More than 400 traditional video conferencing rooms, as well as external clients on other platforms, can now seamlessly connect to Skype for Business meetings via the Pexip interoperability gateway.  

 Arup’s prior hardware-based meeting systems made it difficult to scale usage effectively. Now, with Pexip Infinity, the company has no capacity constraints — and they only pay for what they use, which saves money on CapEx and bandwidth.  

 “We want to make the environment as easy to use as possible, and we see Pexip as that agnostic, cohesive bubble in the middle that brings all those parties and connections together,” says Chris.  

 To learn more about Pexip solutions for your team, contact us today.