At first glance, the road to digital transformation looks like a one-way street. Throw in all the latest technology tools—cloud, SaaS, IoT, or mobile—and there is a winning formula at hand. But clearly this is where most organizations falter. If you look closer, it's the integration of all these fancy new technologies that decides on the weal and woe of their use for digitally transforming an organization. "Without connectivity the internet of everything is nothing," states Dr. Felix Weil, managing director of QUIBIQ, one of Microsoft's leading gold-certified partners focused on providing those connectivity solutions to succeed in today's competitive environments.

So to say, an organization can have every possible emerging technology under the sun, but until and unless these applications talk to each other in an efficient, secure and monitored way that can flexibly adapt to the changing needs of the market, their digital transformation journey will never really take wings. In short, connectivity and seamless integration between the myriad systems, processes, and people spread across a business' IT environment is the "real show-stopper" in today’s API-driven economy. In fact, the right integration solution can help organizations achieve a unified view of their business ecosystem, gain a competitive advantage, and stay at the leading-edge of agility, innovation, and productivity.

Against this backdrop, QUIBIQ is a one-of-a-kind integration solutions and integrated applications provider that is making waves in German-speaking countries for their state-of-the-art offerings. Founded in 2000, QUIBIQ not only has a rich history and vast experience pool but their forte lies in the fact that they have specialized exclusively in connectivity solutions since their genesis. Today, the company offers end-to-end services in the area of integration, starting from analyzing, consulting, conceptual design, architecture development, and training to 24/7 support. “We are creating the basis for successful digital transformation by bringing the power of seamless integration to people,” concludes Dr. Felix Weil. All of QUIBIQ’s solutions are developed based on Microsoft technologies, and as a leading Microsoft gold-certified partner, the company has the highest certification level for the development of cloud and integration solutions.

Standing Tall Amidst Connectivity Needs

It all began close to two decades ago when the e-commerce wave changed the dynamics of the retail industry forever. At that time, QUIBIQ was one of the few Microsoft partners to connect the mushrooming online shops to backend systems of the retailers using the first version of Microsoft BizTalk Server. To throw more light, BizTalk is a middleware system that enables companies to automate business processes, through the use of adapters, tailored to communicate with the different software systems in an organization. While the online shops attracted the attention of the masses QUIBIQ’s solutions played their magic from under the hood and were the first-of-its-kind to connect the resulting orders out of the online world with complex ERP, logistics, and finance systems in the backend of the retailers. Thus began the company’s journey with integration solutions, and since then there has been no looking back.

In 2005, they received the award for the most valuable contributor to Microsoft’s integration platform and went on to receive the same award for five years in a row—depicting the strong footing that QUIBIQ had built in the market. Today, QUIBIQ showcases complete technological, methodological, and solutions expertise in several Microsoft products such as BizTalk Server, Azure Integration Services, Azure ML, .NET, SQL Server, and more.

“In the recent past, we experienced another revolutionary upheaval in the technology landscape, ushered by IoT and cloud. These technologies open up a world of new possibilities for organizations but without ‘connectivity’ they fall flat like the online shops without being able to place the orders of their visitors,” says Dr. Weil. Organizations across the board, at present, have heterogeneous and distributed endpoints that must be connected for improved organizational visibility, data-driven insights, and overall better service delivery. According to Massimo Pezzini, Research Vice President of Gartner, in 2020, integration work will account for 50 percent of the time and cost of building a digital platform. For this reason, at least 65 percent of large organizations will have implemented a hybrid integration platform to power their digital transformation by 2022.
As such, whether the need of the hour is simple system integration or a company-wide platform to orchestrate mission-critical solutions running globally, QUIBIQ with their deep knowledge in Microsoft integration platforms is an organization’s best bet. The company is adept at building customized solutions and handling Greenfield projects. Owing to their close partnership with Microsoft, QUIBIQ can bring any integration requirement requested by a client to life. To accelerate the process of building custom solutions, the company has developed their own unique business integration framework— QUIBIF. The framework comprises best practice architectures, components, and pre-defined templates, which ensure that even complex integration needs are delivered on time and on budget. QUIBIF pools the knowledge from hundreds of successfully completed projects to help clients improve overall processes in error handling, managing metadata and notifications, defining configuration values, and more. This creates a win-win solution for everyone as it saves on project cost and lowers risk.

The Integration Virtuoso

Putting their years of market experience to the best possible use, the company has also come up with the QUIBIQ Business Integration Suite (QUIBIS), which is a compilation of best-in-class predefined solutions that mitigate commonly occurring challenges in the industry.

For instance, for easy electronic data interchange, the company offers QUIBIS EDI that expands on the BizTalk Server and can be adapted to a client’s existing environment. QUIBIS EDI functions as a complete system for development of individual EDI processes that are legally compliant and traceable. Similarly, the QUIBIS X.400 Adapter allows seamless communication with the BizTalk Server.

The best part about these solutions is that they have been tried and tested several times over the years and are designed to be robust and user-friendly. Taking full advantage of the cloud QUIBIQ offers now both products also as a service in Azure helping smaller companies to start with EDI on a pay per use basis.

Amidst several integration solution providers in the marketplace at present, QUBIQ’s niche focus on integration and scale makes them a cut above the rest. Currently, the company is one of the largest providers of developer resources in the area of integration in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and no one else can match their ability when it comes to handling large and demanding projects on the Microsoft integration platform be it BizTalk or Azure.

To give an idea of QUIBIQ’s prowess, the case study of the equipment manufacturing giant, Liebherr is the perfect example. The client’s Earthmoving Division, Liebherr Hydraulikbagger GmbH was on the lookout for a modern, future-proof integration solution that would help them maintain connections with their dealership worldwide and exchange data on a real-time basis. Liebherr also wanted the chosen platform to offer a central evaluation of machines in the field for predictive maintenance. This would not only contribute to equipment upkeep but also ensure that partners spread across globally are alerted on time in case of any mishap or malfunction.

"We are excited about the possibilities Microsoft brings to the table with their machine learning capabilities and are looking forward to leveraging that"

In response, QUIBIQ came up with a hybrid integration architecture specifically designed for the client that provided standardized endpoint services built on Microsoft Azure. A combination of Azure and BizTalk solutions turned out to be ideal as it helped QUIBIQ deliver their solutions in a cost-efficient and resource-conserving manner. Apart from effectively connecting the devices, QUIBIQ also set the foundation for analyzing the data flowing through the systems with advanced ML and AI techniques that will empower Liebherr with crucial insights. With QUIBIQ’s vision and solutions strategy, the client could finally set sail their 'real' journey of digital transformation.

Connecting the Future

“Everything said, the main reason behind our success boils down to one single factor—our employees,” states Dr. Weil. The staff at QUIBIQ consists of a strong bench of experts that have been associated with the company and the integration practice since more than a decade, further adding to QUIBIQ’s credibility. In every step of the way, the company and its people put customer needs first and as a result, they have a strong support service in place. This includes technical support, managed services, and guaranteed recovery times for business-critical applications.

In the days to come, QUIBIQ plans on massively expanding their staff portfolio, to bring nothing but the best for customers. In order to attract top-notch employees and be closer to their clients, the company recently branched out—through new subsidiaries—around several locations in Germany. The focus will also be directed at improving their AI component, and Dr. Weil mentions, “We are excited about the possibilities Microsoft brings to the table with their machine learning capabilities and are looking forward to leveraging that.”

After going over QUIBIQ’s story so far, one thing is certain. The company’s long-standing experience, strong solutions portfolio, and deep knowledge of the Microsoft integration and Azure platforms truly make them the go-to integration specialist in today’s connected world!