Exxaro Resources transforms communications with +OneX
The client
Exxaro Resources Limited is one of the top five coal producers in South Africa. Since 2006, Exxaro has become one of South Africa's largest and foremost black-empowered and diversified mining companies. The group is a constituent of the JSE Top 40 Index and among the top 30 in the FTSE/JSE Socially Responsible Investment Index.
The challenge
When Exxaro moved its headquarters to a new, state-of-the art building in Centurion, it decided to seize the opportunity to transition to a modern, cloud-based unified communications and collaboration platform. The company asked +OneX Communications, its long-time telephony solutions provider, to help it migrate head office and key sites across South Africa to Microsoft Teams.
Exxaro wanted a solution that would allow its cloud users at all sites — including mines in Mpumalanga and Limpopo — to make and receive calls using its existing public switched telephone networks (PSTN) service. It also needed a platform that would allow it to gradually transition users to Microsoft Teams.
The solution
Our Unify, Microsoft, and AudioCodes engineers collaborated to create a solution that would leverage Exxaro’s existing infrastructure, including a central SIP trunk for the PSTN at the Teraco Data Centre as well as an Atos Unify OpenScape 4000 PBX system. The OpenScape 4000 solution allows legacy and IP comms to reside side-by-side in the same enterprise on the same platform. At Exxaro, it also provides attendant and interactive voice response (IVR) services for the users at head office.
Our team implemented an AudioCodes Cloud Connector Edition appliance at each of the five Exxaro sites. Each of these appliances consists of four virtual machines running on a Windows server host, as well as a session border controller. The appliances provide connectivity between Office 365 and on-premise PSTN infrastructure to facilitate external calling for Microsoft users. This approach allowed Exxaro to keep using its legacy solution where necessary.
Phumelela Ndobo
Business Development Executive for Unified Communications & Collaboration at +OneX
Business value achieved
We have migrated all 700 users at the head office to Microsoft Teams. We have also rolled out 20 pilot Microsoft Teams users at each of Exxaro’s four mining sites. The rest of the users continue to use the Unify PABX infrastructure, which we also provided and support. We will migrate more users to Microsoft Teams as the need arises.