Indeed, NTT Brasil has completely transformed its approach to delivering solutions, focusing on a cloud-first strategy. Kampfe puts it like this: “Most processes we had in the past, which were physical and manual, are now digital. In Brazil, we call this ‘shining in the eyes’—a wonderful experience.”

The company’s achievements have since been widely recognized by analysts. For example, NTT Ltd. was recognized by IDC and Gartner as a global leader in virtual network services, and by Frost & Sullivan as a leader in managed cloud services. The company is now leading its customers through cloud transformation journeys with great success, earning it the 2022 VMware Partner Cloud Innovation and Transformation Award.

A smart approach to infrastructure transformation

The company saw many of its customers looking to the cloud as a way to gain more agility, to move faster in emerging markets, and scale more easily and cost effectively. But as companies migrated applications and data into the cloud, they saw costs go up, not down as expected. What was going wrong?

“Companies were mixing too many different environments in the cloud,” Kampfe observes. “They were moving so fast, no one stopped to think—does this belong in the cloud? Most of them still have huge legacy data centers. How can they bring these two worlds together in a smart way? They need governance. And, of course, they need to ensure security across the on-premises and cloud environments.”

Kampfe found the answer to all these points by partnering with VMware. “Our expertise in legacy infrastructure combined with VMware hybrid cloud solutions puts NTT Brasil in a very strategic position to help customers modernize their infrastructures, as well as maintain strong governance and security. This is critical for them to be faster to market with new offerings, and more agile and responsive to their customers, while achieving cost efficiency.”

Innovative hybrid cloud solution for 5G services

Proving the power of its partnership with VMware, NTT Brasil harnessed VMware hybrid cloud solutions to help a leading multinational telecom company modernize its service platform. This telecom customer—one of the largest in Brazil—provides a range of fixed and mobile telephony, broadband, and subscription television service offerings.

The customer needed a modern platform to run its 5G mobile data and voice services, and had specified the platform should be a hybrid cloud infrastructure, capable of supporting both cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs). The platform would also require flexibility to support future 5G services while maintaining carrier-grade service quality.

NTT Brasil recognized that meeting these demands would not be easy. In fact, the customer had previously attempted to build a telco cloud infrastructure, but the vendors it engaged were unable to deliver. This time, however, NTT Brasil and VMware came through with a viable solution.

Kampfe notes, “This telecom customer chose to work with NTT Brasil because of the VMware solutions we offered, along with our expertise to integrate the legacy and cloud worlds.”

The solution is based on VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure (TCI), VMware Telco Cloud Platform (TCP), and VMware monitoring and operations tools, including VMware vRealize Operations Manager, VMware vRealize Log Insight, VMware vRealize Network Insight, and Telco Cloud Operations. It also provides the customer with multi-site, multi-tenant capabilities leveraging a number of integrated components for a full-function software-defined data center: VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware vCenter Server and VMware NSX-T Manager, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes, and Telco Cloud Automation.

With this new solution, the customer now has the hybrid cloud and programmable digital infrastructure needed for its expanding 5G service platform. The infrastructure enables the telecom company to provision services for its customers on-demand, and new offerings can be launched in a matter of weeks compared to months as in the past. Moreover, the hybrid cloud allows the customer to scale capacity in just days, not months, to handle ongoing growth in 5G service demand.

Importantly, 65 percent of the telecom company’s revenue is now generated through digital assets rather than hardware, providing more cost-efficient operations and dramatically reducing outages due to hardware issues. NTT Brasil is now expanding the hybrid cloud for the customer, from three data centers to 15 in the near term, and eventually to 37 data centers by 2024.

Investing in partnership is key to ongoing success

Through the telecom company example, NTT Brasil has shown what cloud innovation and transformation looks like in the real world. As NTT Brasil continues to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, built on VMware technology, the company has invested in building its technical competencies, having achieved six VMware Master Services Competencies:

• Cloud Management and Automation
• Data Center Virtualization
• Digital Workspace
• Network Virtualization
• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware Cloud on AWS

Kampfe points out that the company is also making additional investments. “To demonstrate how much we believe in VMware, we launched a VMware Academy in Brazil. The idea of the academy is to develop more professionals skilled in VMware technologies to fill growing demand for talent in our industry.”

NTT Brasil is continually pursuing opportunities to drive innovation—within its own business and for its customers. Kampfe says building a partner ecosystem is critical. “We see VMware as one of the only vendors providing solutions to modernize infrastructures with hybrid cloud platforms and digital solutions that tie seamlessly into companies’ on-prem data centers. It’s like the glue that bonds everything together.”

Kampfe concludes, “Our customers want to move to cloud, but they have built huge legacy infrastructures over the past decade. How can they integrate the old with the new? We say, virtualize everything.”

Stay tuned for more spotlights on our 2021 VMware Partner Achievement Award winners just like this one. Interested in becoming a VMware Partner? Learn about the VMware Partner Connect program. Looking for a VMware Partner like NTT Brasil? Find one using our Partner Locator. Then learn how VMware Principal Partners can help drive your business success.