Dental Bauer Modernizes Its Site Connectivity with SD-WAN from A1 Digital

Since 1947, Dental Bauer has been providing dentists and dental technicians with consumables, practice equipment, and technical services from a single source, evolving from a regional family-owned business into one of the leading dental wholesalers in the German-speaking world. This growth was made possible by several strategic acquisitions. Today, the company is part of the portfolio of the private equity firm Aurelius and employs over 650 people at approximately 40 locations in Germany, as well as in Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Dental Bauer’s business model is based on three pillars that complement one another. At its core is the sale of materials and small equipment as a full-range supplier with over 100,000 items, which can be ordered via a web store or by phone. The second pillar is the equipment division, where Dental Bauer supplies, installs, and provides long-term maintenance for dental chairs, X-ray machines, and practice furniture. The third pillar is the technical field service team, consisting of approximately 200 technicians who repair and maintain equipment directly at the practices.

The Challenge

Dental Bauer has a decentralized structure: Many locations are small and often staffed by only a handful of employees. Servers and central systems, such as the SAP system and the telephone system, are operated by an external service provider as a managed service. For a long time, the locations were connected via a Vodafone MPLS network.

When Mario Spänhoff, IT Infrastructure Team Lead at Dental Bauer, took over responsibility for the IT infrastructure in mid-2022, he encountered a situation he recognized from previous employers. The MPLS network service was chronically unreliable: the provider used subcontractors without adequate quality control, faults were nearly impossible to pinpoint, and even simple configuration changes required time-consuming coordination—with no guarantee that they would ultimately be implemented correctly. The costs, on the other hand, were high, and bandwidth was low, especially at the international locations.

Behind these problems lay more than just a poorly performing provider. MPLS, as a technology, has inherent structural weaknesses: The customer is completely tied to its provider, has little transparency regarding traffic and prioritization, and cannot flexibly switch or add lines. For a company whose locations rely on stable connections to central systems on a daily basis, this was not a viable solution.

In Search of a New Solution

For Spänhoff, the goal was clear: greater visibility into the network, better service, higher bandwidths, and independence from the line provider. Furthermore, he wanted to procure the network as a managed service because Dental Bauer has neither the personnel nor the technical capacity to operate such an extensive, distributed network entirely on its own. From his time at his previous employer, Spänhoff was familiar with the concept of Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN), which decouples network control from the physical line and allows the customer to use any Internet connection as the underlying infrastructure. Dental Bauer solicited quotes from several providers and evaluated the options using a structured set of criteria.

In the course of the discussions, A1 Digital emerged as the winner. The Arista Velocloud-based solution was technically more compelling, the consultant on the A1 side was more knowledgeable, and the sales team reliably and fully delivered on its promises. Added to this was a financial advantage and an aspect that only emerged as an equally important decision-making factor during the course of the discussions: A1 Digital was the only vendor among those evaluated that was able to offer a modern VPN solution with exactly the desired features as part of the overall package, thereby completely replacing the existing, outdated system. Following a successful proof of concept involving five locations, Dental Bauer decided to proceed with a full rollout.

SD-WAN and Smart VPN in Use

The rollout plan was based on the current Vodafone contracts, which had different terms depending on the location. Today, over 30 locations have been migrated. The biggest challenge was not the technology, but securing suitable internet connections. Broadband coverage in Germany is uneven, and since Dental Bauer is a tenant at most of its locations, landlords, electricians, and structural hurdles added to the complexity of the project.

This is another area where SD-WAN demonstrates its strengths: the solution is not tied to a specific service provider. If the major providers cannot offer competitive terms, Dental Bauer switches to local alternatives. In many cities, municipal utilities offer fiber-optic connections at a fraction of the previous MPLS costs, with bandwidths that were unimaginable just a few years ago. At locations without adequate fixed-line connectivity, LTE/5G serves as the primary or supplementary underlay.

A1 Digital, together with its subcontractor TechBull, handles day-to-day operations and support. What Spänhoff particularly appreciates about this arrangement is that he doesn’t have a simplified customer view of the network parameters, but rather the same interface that TechBull and A1 Digital themselves use, combined with monthly service meetings for direct communication.

In addition to the SD-WAN, Dental Bauer rolled out a second solution with A1 Digital: Smart VPN, a solution based on Microsoft Always-On VPN, whose servers are operated in the Exoscale cloud. Previously, employees would only log into the company network when they actively wanted to access it, which meant that computers did not receive updates and could not be inventoried. Smart VPN automatically establishes the connection as soon as a company device connects to the internet, even before the user logs in. Certificate-based authentication ensures that only company devices are granted access, which simplifies IT management, ensures complete inventory tracking, and provides a tangible security benefit.

Results That Pay Off

The results of the switch to A1 Digital’s SD-WAN are clear. Bandwidth has increased at all locations, network stability has improved, and for the first time, the IT team has full transparency into what’s happening on the network. What used to require a complex coordination effort involving multiple layers of subcontractors can now be resolved via the shared platform or a brief service meeting.

The picture is just as clear when it comes to costs. The final assessment can only be made after the rollout is completed in 2028, as the last location will still be connected via MPLS until then due to ongoing Vodafone contracts. What Spänhoff can already say today is that savings of at least 30 percent are guaranteed, accompanied by a measurable improvement in quality. In the best-case scenario, the final savings could reach up to 50 percent. Mario Spänhoff sums up the results of the past two years in a single sentence: “The switch to SD-WAN from A1 Digital is one of the best technical decisions Dental Bauer has made in recent years.”

Outlook

By the time the rollout is completed in 2028, Dental Bauer will have fully migrated its entire network of locations to SD-WAN. In the medium term, the company is evaluating whether zero-trust architectures can complement part of its current networking infrastructure once all relevant applications are operated exclusively in the cloud. Until then, Dental Bauer and A1 Digital will continue to work together to ensure the best possible connection quality at the most cost-effective price at the remaining locations as well.