Leading IT infrastructure and services company NTT Ltd. achieves unified, global cloud transformation with Azure

Building a template for global cloud transformation

The NTT project team and Microsoft focused on design and process to develop a standardized and consistent Azure-based platform for NTT. Digital modernization of estates of this breadth and complexity requires a coherent and scalable game plan for how to proceed on a global scale, but a first test case to build the playbook is also needed. For NTT, this test case came from the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, centered in its on-premises Singapore datacenter with equipment that was nearing end of life.

Collaborating with the Azure team, NTT settled on a process—once the design phase was completed, each workload was reviewed during a discovery phase to ensure that it was needed to meet business requirements. In Singapore, approximately 25 percent of the existing workloads were decommissioned. The remainder were migrated using a rehosting strategy, with all remaining Windows and Linux virtual machines and servers (approximately 1,500 to 2,000) moved to Azure and most VMware workloads moved to Azure VMware Solution, with a few VMware workloads remaining on-premises. The delivery platform transformation achieved workload migration savings of more than $100,000 per month. In addition, NTT estimates the overall three-year total cost of ownership savings from the move to a consumption-based Azure model to be $1 million. Pascal Weiss, Regional Chief Information Officer for Asia Pacific at NTT Ltd., views the APAC migration as a successful trial run for the entire company. “We’re now ready to accelerate based on our experience over the last few months, leveraging our new playbook,” says Weiss. NTT provides business-critical cloud and hosting services and needed to be very mindful of how it supported its clients. Richard Banfield, IT Information Systems Director for Asia Pacific at NTT Ltd., says, “Azure helped us ensure we had business continuity and reliability during the transformation.”

Centralizing for global security, business continuity, and disaster recovery

A core goal of the NTT transformation revolves around modernizing and unifying security. Transforming with Azure helps facilitate an improved security posture through secure design and Zero Trust principles. NTT relies on Azure in its efforts to quickly adopt new cloud security solutions and work toward central alignment of global security. The task is a complicated one. “Security as it relates to governance, certifications, and data sovereignty is a major challenge. In APAC alone, we have more than 60 certifications that we need to maintain in our jurisdictions. Azure helps us cater and accommodate for those constraints in every cloud migration,” says Richard.

NTT maintains more than 1,500 subscriptions globally in Microsoft alone, and by consolidating these, NTT will simplify processes tremendously. “Each tenant has different security controls and different frameworks,” explains Pascal. “Moving to Azure reinforces our security posture, with the aim of having more than 200 security controls in a single global tenant.”

Consolidation and simplification have also benefited NTT’s business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) capabilities. “We now have a systematic view of all our assets and can recover much faster than in the past with on-premises infrastructure,” says Pascal. Using Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery, the functionality is better, and the cost is lower. ”Azure gives us more capabilities around disaster recovery,” adds Richard. “Previously, we had to scope out disaster recovery that would be expensive and time consuming to deliver in business continuity planning for our clients. With Azure, BCDR is much quicker and more flexible.”

It’s not only BCDR but overall system health that’s enhanced, due in part to the company’s use of Azure Monitor. “What’s important here is the overall observability,” says Pascal. “Azure Monitor is helping us to validate the health of the infrastructure state and also optimize resources and reduce the cost of our infrastructure.”

A unified cloud future: Less complexity, more capabilities, more value

With the Azure migration, NTT will be able to do much more with less. “In the old environment, if we wanted to spin up new services or onboard a new client, it could take weeks to get that infrastructure in place,” says Richard. “By shifting to Azure, we’re reducing time to market for our services business. We can onboard the client and see that revenue faster.” Pascal adds, “When we talk about savings, it’s not just by moving to the cloud. Azure helps us consolidate through decommissioning applications and workloads by up to a third. In a central operating model, we no longer need decentralized support, helping us achieve an operational cost reduction of roughly 30 percent.”

In addition to Azure, NTT uses Microsoft 365 on a global scale and Microsoft Power Platform on Azure, and Pascal is excited about the benefits to his employees from NTT’s broad Microsoft Cloud adoption. He says, “I can continue to grow my team’s capabilities using things like Microsoft Power Platform and having a common data pool where we can build our analytics directly on Azure. It helps the team stay on top of their game.” Adds Richard, “NTT has been a long-time Microsoft customer in identity management, so we’re a great fit for Azure. A lot of our services teams are already certified in Azure, which helps us to transform even faster.”

The global business case for the move to Azure is profoundly impactful. Prior to migration, a lot of the big-picture costs would be hidden in different areas across all the countries and regions. “Azure gives us that ability to see everything and to optimize and manage our global spend moving forward,” says Richard. For NTT, it’s about unifying the vision and managing total cost of ownership. Says Pascal, “With Azure, we expect to generate $5 million in savings and achieve an objective of reducing operational cost within IT by 30 percent.” He sums it up, noting, “Our migration to the Azure cloud platform is a powerful opportunity to transform our organization, making NTT more satisfying for employees, easier for clients, and more valuable for shareholders.”

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