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.
Case study
Subsea 7
Page 3
HPE upgraded all major land-based
operations to Microsoft Skype for Business.
HPE consultants also migrated Subsea 7’s
data from one datacenter to four datacenters
around the world and implemented a highly
available disaster recovery solution.
Implementing a
global solution
The original datacenter is located in Redditch,
England, and HPE designed a solution based
on distributing the call loads worldwide. HPE
designed and built additional datacenters
in Houston, Singapore, and Aberdeen, and
implemented a disaster recovery solution
to ensure continuous operations. This has
not only reduced bandwidth costs, it has
improved the performance of voice calls by
reducing delays.
“We didn’t have a disaster recovery solution
in place and we needed to ensure reliable
failover so we could successfully implement
SIP trunking to carry calls over the Internet
while ensuring performance and reliability,”
states Leport. “HPE established Skype for
Business mediation pools in each datacenter
with an eicient disaster recovery solution.”
The new Singapore, Houston, and Aberdeen
datacenters failover to the original datacenter
in Redditch. In the event of a failure at the
Redditch datacenter, it will failover to the
datacenter in Aberdeen.
“We worked with our service provider to
deploy SIP trunks to all of our land-based
locations worldwide, except for our smallest
oices and locations in countries like Egypt
that do not allow SIP trunking,” says Leport.
“SIP trunking now allows us to consolidate
our voice traic worldwide and dramatically
reduce our calling costs by virtually
eliminating international calling costs by in
eect routing all of our calls as local traic.
We estimate that the company will save more
than 50% in calling costs in our first year.”
HPE implemented Microsoft Skype for
Business at the four datacenters on HPE
ProLiant BL460c Gen9 Server Blades, and
also deployed Skype for Business at Subsea
7 locations on five continents. Among the
locations deployed include: 8 in the UK; 3
in Brazil; 2 each in the U.S., Singapore, and
Australia; and one each in Gabon, Nigeria,
Canada, France, Portugal, and Angola.
Subsea 7 also deployed Microsoft Skype for
Business on all Subsea 7 vessels, providing
them with conferencing, presence, calendar,
and desktop sharing capabilities. “We
consider our vessels ‘floating oices’ and have
provided them with collaboration features,”
explains Leport. “But because they’re at sea
they still rely on satellite calling services to
make voice calls.”
Case study
Subsea 7
Customer at a glance
HPE Services
• HPE technology consulting services
• HPE digital collaboration solutions
Hardware
• HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 Server
Blades
“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.”
— Adele Leport, IT Engagement and Operations Director for Subsea 7
Simplifying and
streamlining operations
By migrating Subsea 7 to a newer version
of Skype for Business and adding voice
connectivity that the organization did
not previously have, HPE has enabled a
higher level of workplace productivity while
reducing the company’s telecommunications
operating costs. Subsea 7 now has a unified
communications system with a single-source
supplier, providing the organization with a
more eicient cost structure.
“One of the reasons that we selected HPE
services was that the consultants who were
involved in selling the solution would also
manage the implementation,” says Leport.
“The HPE consultants gave us a lot of
confidence in their ability to understand our
objectives and deliver on them.”
HPE also integrated Subsea 7’s unified
communications implementation with
critical suppliers and customers. “Because
we federated our implementation with
deployments by other companies that we
do business with, employees can easily
understand the availability of people
across multiple companies. This has led to
streamlined communications and easier
and faster scheduling of meetings and
conferences,” explains Leport.
Subsea 7 is also driving down the costs of
mobility. According to Leport, “We operate
in parts of the world where mobile calling
is expensive, such as in Africa and Latin
America. This deployment is freeing people
from their desks and allowing them to place
international calls from a Skype for Business
client on a mobile phone at the cost of a local
call because they connect to the Internet
through one of our local facilities. This gives
us the potential to make savings on mobile
voice calls moving forward.”
By migrating to a unified platform,
Subsea 7 has achieved a universally
compatible communications solution that
supports its Skype for Business-enabled
users throughout the organization, all at a
lower cost than before.
With its new disaster recovery solution, even
if one data center goes down, the other three
data centers can keep operations running
smoothly to ensure 100% uptime. “This
unified communications solution has enabled
more eicient intra- and inter-company
communications for Subsea 7 and allowed
us to increase our communications and
collaboration capabilities while lowering our
communications costs,” Leport concludes.
Learn more at
HPE.com/enable
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© 2016 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
warranties for HPE products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services.
Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HPE shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or
omissions contained herein.
4AA6-3573ENW, February 2016
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