Once upon a time in the Alps. Then it set out and conquered the world.

It is the year 2002. Guest WiFi is still in its infancy, and both administrators and providers of such networks—often hotels with business travellers as customers—are confronted with new problems almost daily: excessive data usage, hefty additional charges, bandwidth bottlenecks, and access issues with fixed IP addresses, to name just a few.

The spark of an idea

So when, on a Friday in May, a handful of network engineers toast the end of a long working week in a bar in Landeck, these topics dominate their shop talk. The most brilliant mind among them, Asteas mastermind Anton Strobl, strongly disagrees when someone eventually claims these problems cannot possibly be solved in an engine. Again and again, he sketches out how it could work—until one of his opponents throws down the proverbial gauntlet: “You’ll never get THAT running!”

The ingenious tinkerer

Anton Strobl accepted the challenge. After all, he had been shaped by network engineering over two and a half decades among mainframes and server farms at Austria’s largest banking group. If not him, then who? So on Saturday at 8:00 AM, he sat down in front of the screen and did not leave until he had finished programming the plug & play engine idea that had been born overnight. By Sunday at 4:00 AM, it was done—the engine was running. The IACBOX was born. Less than a year later, in May 2003, it was already set to win its first innovation award.

The visionary market strategist

The local IT pioneers Fabian Ruetz and Martin Wille (Agonet GmbH) proved to be trend scouts and, with the IACBOX —just under two months after its birth—won a project at a hotel in Ischgl. This made it clear just how precisely the market’s needs had been met. Anton Strobl’s kindred partner and AsteasManaging Director Andreas Eckhart immediately recognised that his moment had come. In addition to profound network engineering expertise, he has an exceptional natural talent for marketing and sales topics, as well as a communicative nature that IACBOX led the company unerringly onto the road to success: Less than a year after the first licensing, the cooperation with a very important partner, Siemens AG Austria, began to take shape. With Siemens and thanks to continuous further development that implemented specific customer-group needs promptly and brilliantly, the IACBOX also gained a foothold beyond the hotel and hospitality industry: the first hospitals came on board with the HiMed interface. Municipalities and other public institutions, financial institutions and educational providers, as well as industrial and manufacturing companies followed.

IACBOX conquers the world

From then on, things moved fast: With an unwavering focus on what matters and a remarkable knack for choosing strategic partners, Andreas Eckhart sent the box on a world tour: in 2004, the first one went online in Germany, and then it broke beyond the borders of the German-speaking region. In 2009, the first license went to Dubai; with Club Robinson, TUI Blue and the TUI cruise ships, more and more holiday destinations appeared on the IACBOX map. The leap into international markets had been made. As in the original market, the hospitality sector came on board first, followed by hospital operators and the enterprise sector.

Today, the IACBOX is far more than the former prototype. Fifteen years of development have turned it into an intelligent network gateway with a fully functional WiFi hotspot solution that may not outperform the industry giants in every respect, but easily outshines them in many ways. With around 5,000 active systems, it is represented in over 40 countries worldwide and, with the best price-performance ratio on the market, is an ideal partner for mid-sized companies. Thanks to its deliberately maintained hardware independence, lean company structures and the system’s inherent flexibility, customer and partner requirements can be addressed and market demands responded to quickly and effectively.

A partner you can rely on

Compared to the industry giants, Asteas stands out not only for its price-performance ratio, but also for the immediate availability of German-language support, fast and flexible adaptation to new legal, system or market requirements, and especially for its closeness to customers. The tech team is known far and wide for excellent support and is constantly working on improving and expanding functions, safeguarding quality, and, in general, the security and legal compliance of the entire product. Asteas sees it as its responsibility to offer the IACBOX as a future-proof, reliable solution. Thanks to upgradeable license packages, the solution grows as the customer grows. It is the declared goal of the two masterminds at Asteas to build a lasting, sustainable relationship with customers and partners. The best proof that this strategy works is the IACBOX users from the very beginning, who have remained loyal to the company to this day.

Partners with IACBOX in their portfolio are important allies along the way, share in the success, find attractive conditions and, depending on the use case, scalable prospects, and receive the best possible support. A sales and marketing team supports the sales partners and works diligently on the further development of international markets.

How did things continue in the German-speaking region?

Here, Andreas Eckhart once again demonstrated an unerring instinct and found the perfectly matching sales partners in each case. The distribution cooperation concluded with Infinigate in 2015 is certainly another milestone in this success story. The team responsible for sales was quickly fully convinced by the product and did outstanding work day after day, giving distribution in Germany a strong boost in growth.

Excellent prospects for future success

Continuous development is a core task at Asteas. The ideas never run out, because the market keeps setting the agenda. Data traffic in networks is growing exponentially—online anyway, but offline as well. The Internet of Things brings new security challenges, and although bandwidth expansion is being promoted and pushed by policymakers and interest groups, it remains questionable whether the supply of technology can keep pace and grow as quickly as demand. As a result, bandwidth management will continue to grow in importance.

No matter what happens in the world of connected people, things and processes, you can rely on Asteas. We will stay on it and upgrade the IACBOX so that our customers are always on the safe side and our product reflects the latest state of the art. Our partners also contribute to this time and again by sharing their experiences and giving us feedback from day-to-day work. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our partners from the very beginning. They were and are our loyal allies for greater functionality, security and legal compliance in the world of WiFi access.