IP telephony on a secure network at Omnichem

Ajinomoto Omnichem is part of the Japanese group Ajinomoto. The company produces, among other things, active pharmaceutical ingredients on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, components for crop protection and carries out work on botanical extraction and distributes amino acid mixtures. Ajinomoto Omnichem has branches in Wetteren, Balen and Louvain-la-Neuve and employs 870 people. There is also a branch office in India with about 100 employees.

“ICT is very important for our business operations,” says ICT project manager Michel Derycke. “Our digital transformation is being rolled out step by step.” The company is making increasing use of cloud services. “As a result, we need all sites to have sufficient bandwidth with a local breakout to the internet at each location. Previously, all data traffic from the sites to and from the cloud went through our headquarters in Wetteren.”

Business Trunking on Explore

“Our three sites are interconnected via the Proximus Explore network,” said Derycke. “The company’s IP telephony relies on the Proximus Business Trunking solution and runs exclusively over Explore. It ensures that colleagues can communicate and work together smoothly.” This is important not only for the operation of Ajinomoto Omnichem, but also because it is a licensed business. In the context of safety, the continuous availability of communication is essential for Ajinomoto Omnichem.

Moreover, to facilitate calls between the Belgian sites and the branch office in India, Ajinomoto Omnichem has chosen for Fixed Voice Infinity World, the all-in-one package including a VoIP line and unlimited calls in Belgium, and 5,000 call minutes per voice channel in Europe and worldwide.

Michel Derycke, ICT Project Manager at Ajinomoto Omnichem

To make sure that they had a smoother internet connection that did not require any diversions via Wetteren, Ajinomoto Omnichem chose a different approach: redundant connectivity via Proximus and a second provider. An SD-WAN solution ensures optimal use of the two providers’ lines. “The solution also combines the capacity of both lines, giving us the optimal bandwidth at all times,” Derycke explained. “If one provider’s line goes down, the other takes over.” That way, an internet connection is always guaranteed.

Michel Derycke, ICT Project Manager at Ajinomoto Omnichem

Faster and redundant connection

Specifically, each Ajinomoto Omnichem site will have two lines with a bandwidth of 300 Mbps. “These are lines from two providers that each follow a different, physical path,” said Derycke. “The two providers also do not rent lines from each other so this is deduplication in the true sense of the word. This increases the level of redundancy of our connectivity.”

This redundant approach ensures minimal downtime. “The chance of two providers going completely down at the same time is very small,” said Derycke. In addition to this guaranteed operational safety, the local breakout to the internet gives the employees an important advantage. “They notice that everything is much faster now. For someone using Office 365 in our factory at Balen, the connection used to go through our headquarters in Wetteren. The delay that inevitably occurred in doing so is now gone.”