Cisco to Migrate NTT from Legacy Platforms to Cloud-Based Calling, Collaboration

Networking giant Cisco is helping longtime partner NTT to simplify its cloud environments via the Webex cloud platform. The goal for NTT, a company known for its turnkey private 5G, is to enhance hybrid work and productivity.

In many respects this partnership is a case study in collaboration and telephony that offers flexible, inclusive, supportive, secure and managed solutions, all the while containing costs, Cisco officials said.

Cisco’s Kristyn Hogan

“We are thrilled to expand our 30-plus-year strategic partnership with NTT to transition customers to the Cisco Webex cloud calling and collaboration platform,” said Kristyn Hogan, vice president, global collaboration partner sales at Cisco. “As part of this, we expect up to 2 million users from our joint customers to migrate from legacy platforms to new cloud models.”

‘It’s Not a Switch that Flips Overnight’

The NTT migration will take three years.

“I think it’s a realistic timeline. Every customer is in a different place on their hybrid work journey, and also their cloud journey,” Hogan said. “It’s not a switch that flips overnight. So given the quantity of users we want to migrate, I think it’s a very realistic target.”

Hogan added that leveraging NTT managed services and the networking giant’s cloud migration team, customers will migrate to calling, meetings and communications capabilities on the Cisco Webex cloud platform and will expect reliable performance with 99.99% uptime.

Migrating from legacy and on-premises to cloud-based calling and collaboration capabilities allows customers to enjoy the benefits of telephony in their collaboration solutions, eliminating numerous and unpredictable costs associated with PBX solutions, Cisco said. According to NTT research, customers who make the move to cloud voice typically achieve an average savings of 40-60% savings. These savings are a result of comprehensive calling plans and a significant reduction of the total cost of ownership and capital expenditure associated with on-premises hardware.

In addition, Cisco is partnering to closely ensure that NTT is “packaging up” its own managed services.

“Managed services is probably the biggest focus area at Cisco from a route to market lens,” Hogan said. “We have teams of people whose full-time job is to be really architecture-product-agnostic, ensuring that every step of the way in that managed journey with a partner is successful from service creation, all the way to that end user adoption, and everything in between.”

She added: “I often say, we make the engine, and our partners add the car around the engine.”

Working with NTT means providing high-touch, white glove migration, Hogan said.