Why NTT followed its own advice to accelerate technology modernization

The future is in the cloud, driven by software and with a limited need for physical hardware. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and it’s what we tell our clients at NTT daily as we help them make the transition from hardware to software-defined infrastructure (SDI).

We know that organizations that are migrating to the cloud need a comprehensive lifecycle management strategy for their new and legacy assets. According to our research for the 2022–23 Global Network Report, 70% of CIOs and CTOs are concerned about aging or obsolete assets as they try to manage the infrastructure and operational changes required by a cloud-first strategy. A lack of visibility and control will leave them struggling with supporting cloud-based workloads’ demand for greater infrastructure agility, scale, and performance.

But can you really call yourself an expert if you haven’t tried following your own advice? When NTT embarked on a global integration program to bring together 31 separate entities across four continents, each with its own infrastructure and operational practices, it was the perfect opportunity to put our strategies and services to the test.

To achieve cost and operational efficiencies through the consolidation of our assets, our IT team needed a centralized inventory of our global technology estate. So, we took the first step – applying our own expertise in software asset management to simplify a vast and complex licensing estate comprising thousands of multitechnology licensing agreements and associated hardware. Our Software-defined Infrastructure (SDI) Services provided a lifecycle management model that would not only simplify our software asset management but also give us the visibility and control we needed to manage costs, reduce risk and make operational improvements.

Three steps to NTT’s technology modernization success

1. Gaining visibility

First, we had to determine what software-driven assets we had, where they were and how we were using them. Licensing estates grow in volume and complexity over time, leading to compliance-related risks and usage management challenges. We had to assess a huge range of license types and vendor agreements. We also needed to reconcile the licenses against hardware assets, which can be time-consuming and challenging.  

2. Simplifying our license management with a move to Enterprise Agreements

To reconcile our hardware assets with our license estate and consolidate these globally, we worked with our vendor partners to structure multitechnology Enterprise Agreements that allowed us to simplify our software asset management and scale cost-effectively. As a result, we have better visibility and control throughout the lifecycle of our software-defined and legacy assets.

3. Using analytics to optimize software and hardware lifecycle management

Our next challenge was to gain a deeper level of visibility and control to optimize the lifecycle management and availability of both our legacy hardware and our software-defined technology assets.  

To achieve this, we are using our SDI Services, which combines automation, machine learning and API-level integration with vendor technologies to bring together multiple data sources into a single digital experience. As a result, we’ve reduced operational complexity, identified cost efficiencies and potential security vulnerabilities, and driven technology adoption across our licensing estate, associated hardware and legacy assets.

Our Services Portal features a Digital Wallet that makes it easier to manage our subscription software while providing clarity for the efficient lifecycle management of multiple license types, vendors and technologies.

The SDI-driven road ahead

With enhanced visibility and control, we can now easily keep track of our licensing consumption, including compliance, usage and predictive insights on cost efficiencies and risks. There is also an integration with IT service management and our financial systems, so we can easily manage our hardware and software inventory and get the data we need for buying and renewal decisions.

Having transformed our operational model we are now accelerating the integration of software-defined technologies across 250 NTT sites globally. This includes moving applications to the cloud and modernizing our infrastructure, initially in partnership with Cisco and then with other vendor partners.

This process of smart simplification has placed us in a position where we can accelerate the time to value from our technology investments and increase the efficiency of our operations. Even more importantly, we can now also call on our own experience and best practices to help our clients achieve the same results. 

For example, we worked with a global financial services provider that needed one contract with a single end date to manage all of its software licenses. We constructed an Enterprise Agreement to mitigate the risk of unforeseen license expiry and ensure efficient usage, which in turn curbed operational risk and reduced direct costs by USD 1.7 million a year.

Another client, a European rail agency, needed to simplify and improve the way it approached lifecycle management. Cisco provided the capability to deliver the agency’s licenses through a centralized Smart Account, but to optimize the management of its entire licensing estate, we helped the agency build a holistic strategy to include existing licenses that were not centrally managed.

Learn more about how we’re preparing our clients for an SDI-powered future.