Polycom: Reducing cost and streamlining its IT footprint 

Together with Polycom, we’re keeping companies connected. Polycom is the world’s leading provider of video and voice conferencing technologies. More than 400,000 companies and organizations use their HD video and phone conferencing tools. They relied on NTT’s Sacramento CA3 Data Center to host their internal IT infrastructure footprint — including its production ERP environment, email system and customer service tools. As their footprint grew, the cost of maintaining their infrastructure with internal resources became unsustainable. We helped them update and consolidate their IT environment and reduce costs by turning over the daily management and operation of Polycom’s infrastructure to the Sacramento facility’s on-site remote hands and eyes team. 

Vision

In 2005, Polycom chose our Sacramento data center to host its internal IT servers. As they expanded their footprint, it became more fragmented and more difficult to manage with internal resources. They initially wanted to move their infrastructure closer to their San Jose, California headquarters in order to make ongoing management easier for their engineers. However, we made a proposal to help Polycom improve manageability of their footprint while reducing costs.

Why Sacramento

Low-cost power: 40% lower cost of power in Sacramento than San Francisco.

Low disaster risk: There have been no major earthquakes in Sacramento for more than 100 years. It’s a separate seismic zone and power grid from the Bay Area.

Low-latency network: Less than a three-millisecond round trip to the Bay Area.

‘We turned over day-to-day operations and support of Polycom’s servers to the  remote hands and eyes technicians. Whatever we need, they can do it for us.’ 
Elias Dimitropoulos, IT Director for Networking , Unified Communications and Data Centers

Transformation

We updated and consolidated Polycom’s servers into a single cage at the Sacramento data center. They turned over daily management and maintenance of their footprint to our on-site remote hands and eyes team.

A client services project manager coordinated with Polycom’s team to orchestrate the logistics while our remote hands and eyes team handled deployment of the new cage, installation of power circuits and network cabling and moving the hardware.

We helped Polycom upgrade their infrastructure — decommissioning obsolete or unused equipment and replacing them with new or virtualized servers.

Results

After turning over day-to-day operations of their servers to our in-house team and consolidating their servers, Polycom discovered several business benefits.

IT footprint

The consolidation saved Polycom more than 30% in the overall cost to maintain their IT footprint.

Remote hands and eyes

Turning over daily management to the remote hands and eyes team saves Polycom the time and expense of sending internal staff to the data center — while maintaining complete control over their infrastructure.

Flexible power

Polycom wanted to relocate high-density internal video servers used in product demonstrations to the Sacramento facility. Flexible power options and high- quality support enabled Polycom to easily and reliably add additional power for their equipment without renegotiating terms.