By Niklaus Baer
Sonova is a leading provider of innovative hearing solutions. Sonova's management is committed to regularly communicating with its more than 14,000 employees around the globe - in the simplest and most efficient way possible. Among other things, the company uses Microsoft Teams as a live video platform and Hive Streaming for the intelligent distribution of content within the corporate network. To ensure the quality and stability of the transmissions, the company relies on Swisscom's Managed Services offering in the area of live streaming.
The challenge
Keeping a large number of employees in more than 100 countries regularly up to date on corporate goals and strategy is no easy task for internal communications. Sonova attaches great importance to ensuring that "employees not only receive information, but also understand it and thus identify with Sonova", says Daniela Heiniger, Communications Manager at Sonova. The medium of video is ideal for this, because it helps to create closeness, authenticity and sympathy. But which technological platform is best suited for this and with which partners can live broadcasts of, for example, town hall meetings be realised most efficiently?
The solution
Sonova asked itself precisely these questions and found the answers at Swisscom, Microsoft and Hive Streaming. "Microsoft Teams is already an established tool to promote communication and collaboration in our company," says Stephan Jola, Senior Content and Collaboration Specialist. MS Teams Live Events was thus the logical choice for the distribution of live videos in the company and this independent of the equipment used or recording location.
However, the use of live videos by thousands of employees at the same time within the company network can exceed the capacities of the existing bandwidth and, in addition to the stability and quality of the video stream, even endanger surrounding systems. By integrating the peering-based Enterprise Content Delivery Network solution (eCDN) from Hive Streaming, this risk could be eliminated by means of intelligent bandwidth relief. Hive Streaming also adds value by providing insightful analytics tools regarding video consumption and network utilisation.
As a local partner of Hive Streaming, Swisscom successfully accompanied the integration of the eCDN solution and, in collaboration with Sonova employees, is also taking over the operational execution of some live events, including audio and video production and direction within the Microsoft Teams platform.
«Swisscom's experience, flexibility and regional proximity made it possible for us to simply hold the first worldwide streaming event in a very short time.»
Stephan Jola, Senior Content und Collaboration Specialist, Sonova AG
Thanks to Swisscom's support, Sonova can now use existing tools - such as Microsoft 365 in this case - for efficient use and at the same time protect the company's own network from overload with an intelligent eCDN solution from Hive Streaming for HD video streaming. This lays the foundation for further live events that support Sonova in informing employees worldwide even better about current developments and strategic decisions.
Our services
- eCDN
- Streaming
- Town Hall Meeting