Exactly 10 years ago, Luware was founded. What started as a Bachelor thesis about connecting Microsoft Office Communications Server with Cisco has become an international company with 80 Luwarians across five locations, an extensive product and service portfolio and over 200 customers from around the world.
The founders Michael Jakob (CTO) and Philipp Beck (CEO) are active in the operational business to this day.
Bachelor students Michael Jakob and Andreas Kobler along with their tutor Philipp Beck, believed that connecting the Microsoft Unified Communications (UC) solutions with the Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management Enterprise (ICM), was the right approach for an IT landscape that supports efficient customer service. In their bachelor thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR), they developed a software solution which used the benefits of the Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS; a predecessor of Skype for Business) and Cisco ICM. The proof of concept showed how voice calls and chat messages could be efficiently routed efficiently by the contact center solution to an available agent, utilizing the presence status of OCS and agent skills from Cisco ICM.
The proof of concept gained more and more interest in the market. Medicall, the leading Swiss company for medical assistance with 3.5 million insured customers, was very enthusiastic about the solution. They wanted to use Microsoft UC in their customer service center in connection with a contact center solution. So, Philipp and Michael formed the company: Luware.
Great thanks to the co-founders who believed in our idea and have supported us financially and with their extensive knowledge: Hansruedi Hänni, industry expert from Bucher + Suter AG and Beat Stettler, Head of the Institute of IT at HSR.
To this day, Michael Jakob and Philipp Beck are still active in the operational business of Luware as CTO and CEO respectively.
More and more companies were convinced by Luware’s contact center and routing solutions based on Microsoft technology – thanks to all our loyal customers who have made a major contribution to our success. With a constant growth of customers to over 200 to this day, more Luwarians joined the team to further develop the solutions and serve our customers. Today, our team counts 80 dedicated software developers, system engineers, sales and back office employees in Switzerland, the UK, Germany, Belarus and the USA who ensure daily operation and constant innovation.
Our team in Switzerland including our founders.
With the growth in business, so too did the product line-up. Luware has constantly adapted its portfolio to match the Microsoft UC solutions: OCS, Lync, Skype for Business and now of course Microsoft Teams. The contact center and routing applications were joined by additional solutions for recording, presence forwarding and webchat, putting Luware as the ‘one stop shop’ for the add-ons needed on Microsoft UC to be able to successfully replace the PBX.
While our company has grown and changed over the decade – our spirit remained. A very collegiate work environment with Luwarians who are passionate about user-friendly software and great customer service. For 10 years we have been developing our products in line with the evolving product portfolio of Microsoft and we will continue to do so in the future. Besides enhancing our on-premise and federated applications and services, we are developing natively integrated omnichannel customer service solutions that run completely in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Stay tuned.