Case Study
Subsea 7 reduces costs by
migrating worldwide to Microsoft
Objective
• Reduce telecommunications costs and
increase global productivity
Approach
• Migrate to Microsoft Skype for Business
worldwide to streamline operations and
simplify communications
IT Matters
• Simplified management by migrating 45
Cisco Call Managers to four Skype for
Business pools
• Implemented a distributed datacenter
strategy to increase reliability and
redundancy
• Deployed a unified communications
solution that streamlines operations
Business Matters
• Estimated first-year calling savings of
over 50%
• Reduced conferencing costs by 80%
• Increased productivity worldwide
by simplifying communications and
collaboration
Skype for Business
HPE Technology Consulting Services builds
unified communications infrastructure
Subsea 7 worked with
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
(HPE) to design and
implement a unified
communications solution
based on Microsoft Skype
for Business that supports
over 6,500 users around the
world.
A global leader in seabedto-surface engineering,
construction and services
Subsea 7 is one of the world’s leading global
contractors in seabed-to-surface engineering,
construction and services to the oshore
energy industry. It provides technical
solutions to enable the delivery of complex
projects in all water depths and challenging
environments.
The company had a single datacenter
infrastructure hosting Microsoft Skype for
Business (formerly Microsoft Lync) without
enterprise voice functionality. This platform
was being used by employees around the
world, and there was no disaster recovery
solution in place. HPE provided Subsea 7
with a complete solution to transform to a
more manageable, cost-eective, and reliable
communications approach.
Case study
Subsea 7
Page 2
“HPE has helped us reduce operating costs while increasing workplace
connectivity. HPE consultants designed a reliable distributed datacenter
approach and successfully migrated Subsea 7 to Microsoft Skype for
Business in over 25 locations worldwide.”
— Adele Leport, IT Engagement and Operations Director for Subsea 7
HPE consultants designed and implemented
a robust unified communications solution with
highly available data recovery by upgrading
worldwide to Microsoft Skype for Business
and deploying three new datacenters to
support unified communications. Most of
the company’s land-based facilities have
been provided with localized bandwidth
management, and all facilities are being
provided with rich unified communications
services, including presence management,
audio and video conferencing, calendaring,
and desktop sharing.
Moving to unified
communications
Subsea 7 was looking to reduce the cost of
its services so it could continue to provide a
competitive ROI for its projects. The company
had Cisco Call Manager at 45 locations, and
had legacy contracts with multiple telephone
service providers.
Subsea 7 sought to design and implement
a long-term unified communications and
telephony road map and leverage Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking to implement
Tier 1 voice services worldwide. Subsea 7
wanted to increase eiciency throughout its
internal operations, and HPE was chosen
as the company best-suited to provide
Subsea 7 with a unified communications
solution worldwide.
HPE had a longtime relationship with
Subsea 7—primarily providing storage
solutions, and Microsoft also recommended
HPE as the partner of choice for deploying a
single unified communications solution across
five continents. “HPE has been a forerunner in
the adoption of the unified communications
technology, which gave us confidence in
HPE’s ability to act as an agent for change
for Subsea 7,” says Adele Leport, IT Project
Manager for Subsea 7.
Subsea 7 selected HPE services for Microsoft
Skype for Business, part of HPE digital
collaboration solutions. HPE consultants
designed and implemented the Skype
for Business solution and associated
infrastructure, in addition to designing and
implementing disaster recovery capabilities
for Subsea 7. The company consolidated
onto a single global service provider, and SIP
trunking was implemented at all major landbased locations to better control costs.
The global dependency on a single
datacenter was eliminated, and HPE built
three additional datacenters to eliminate
the need to backhaul all calls to a single
datacenter so Subsea 7 could increase
performance and enable redundancy and
disaster recovery. By deploying a dedicated
Skype for Business mediation pool in each
of the four datacenters, Subsea 7 is able to
retire its legacy Cisco telephony solution
and rely on a single unified communications
infrastructure to support global operations.