Case Study
NTT Innovation Laboratory Israel Creates “Magic” Product Evaluation Environments with CloudShare
Overview
With more than 330,000 employees in over 80 countries and regions, the NTT Group is a world leader in providing technology and business solutions.
NTT Innovation Laboratory Israel (NTT Israel) is a strategic focal point to NTT in Israel, which facilitates synergies between NTT and the Israeli ecosystem. Company offerings include open innovation processes, consulting with NTT business units, as well as labs and tailored services and collaboration with academia. NTT Israel is a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT.
Challenge
This isn’t a case study of how CloudShare gave a software company the virtual IT lab it needs to deliver training and/or product demos. Rather, it’s the story of how a customer was able to repurpose the CloudShare platform to create a sandbox in which they’d evaluate new technologies for their clients.
The NTT Innovation Laboratory Israel (NTT IL) determined it would need a more efficient and cost-effective way to evaluate technology products—in realistic environments—from companies aiming to become part of the NTT ecosystem. Essential parts of the evaluation include running proof of concepts (PoCs), proof of value (PoV) environments, and demos.
Prior to coming on board with CloudShare, NTT IL could not evaluate new technology in a safe, self-contained environment that replicated reality. Instead, they would create mocked environments with randomly generated data.
Showing the solution in action was also not an option. So, after evaluations were complete, they collected screenshots and provided decision-makers with static reports.
In their quest to find a more efficient solution, they began by defining their goals.
“What we built is an environment with multiple vendors integrated together. My team, the business unit team, or even customers that want to evaluate the new technologies, can then access the environment—and it can include solutions being compared side-by-side.”
Moshe Karako, CTO
Solution
NTT IL evaluated three virtual IT platforms and chose CloudShare based on numerous criteria and requirements. With CloudShare at the core, they created what they now call the “Virtual Smart Lab” or VSL, a multi-vendor environment.
Moshe explained all innovation labs are challenged to create environments with real-world data and specific operating systems but do so in different ways. Some build different kinds of labs on public clouds. Some have on-premise ESXi servers and deploy everything there. The problem is these approaches, unlike CloudShare’s instant “spin-up” solution, burn time and money.
Results
CloudShare now allows NTT IL to set up new evaluation environments in an instant and modify things in a minute.
“We don’t need DevOps to set up everything for us. The fact is, with a click, we can spawn an OS and install everything immediately. We can use the environment from any part of the world without the need to install anything, any type of client software on our customer’s system.”
Moshe Karako. CTO
Moshe described an innovative example of how CloudShare served an invaluable role in executing a complex project involving evaluating cybersecurity technologies capable of using of machine learning to find anomalies in factories. Doing so would require having access to a model that would simulate a working factory.
With CloudShare, they built a chemical factory emulation based on open source software. Like a real factory, all vital software-controlled processes required to produce chemicals interacted as if they were real.
After launching the factory emulation, simulations were run for two months. In month three, they began creating and introducing anomalies that hackers are known to use. Both cybersecurity platforms they were tasked to evaluate proved effective. The winner was chosen based on its results dashboard that made it easy to use and understand.
Based on the success of the project, plans are in the works to create similar emulations for a variety of other industries including insurance, banking, and healthcare.
Moshe raved about CloudShare’s:
- Pricing structure
CloudShare gives NTT IL a clear pricing structure. Initially, they were able to prove ROI in a very limited environment and then scale as needed. - Control
CloudShare offers a highly controlled environment. For NTT IL, this enables them to know who logged in and what type of actions they took. CloudShare also allows NTT IL to define as many environment policies as needed and apply them to virtual environments. - Technical Support
Moshe marveled at the tech support he’s received. Although he has a four-hour SLA, he claims CloudShare’s response time is often less than the time it takes to fill out a support request.
“CloudShare has tech support built inside the environment, so when I open a ticket, it is very specific to the environment I’m running at that time. It’s super easy.”.
Moshe Karako, CTO
Looking Forward
NTT IL currently has approximately 80 people working with VSL environments in 15 to 20 groups within the company. The system has 43 run environments that anyone can set up for product evaluations.
Moshe says he advocates the use of CloudShare to other NTT groups who are not aware of it. He plans to introduce CloudShare to a group in Singapore they work with on cybersecurity training. “I’m going to tell them not to use a virtual machine for that,” he said. “I’ll tell them to use CloudShare and our VSL. It will be great for NTT but also for customers.”
“I’m going to tell them not to use a virtual machine for that,” he said. “I’ll tell them to use CloudShare and our VSL. It will be great for NTT but also for customers.”
Moshe Karako, CTO