Brocade Communications Systems

Intranet Improves Productivity and Access to Information, Reduces Costs

Brocade Communications Systems, a company specializing in data center networking solutions, needed to deliver corporate information to employees in a centralized manner. Content was difficult to locate because it was spread across disparate storage systems and locations. With help from EMC Corporation, Brocade implemented a new intranet based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to give employees better access to corporate data and enhanced collaboration tools. Employees now have the tools they need to contribute to the company more effectively. They have better access to information resources, and intranet use has more than doubled. Brocade employees also improve efficiency by using automated workflow processes and templates to manage projects. Finally, calls to the company’s help desk have decreased by 30 percent because employees can find and use information more easily.

Situation

By using Office SharePoint Server 2007, we met our goal of getting employees integrated into the company faster. The faster they are assimilated, the more productive they are.  Damon Roberson Senior Manager, Collaborative and Web Technologies Brocade Communications Systems

Based in San Jose, California, Brocade Communications Systems has 2,400 employees in offices worldwide and annual revenue of U.S.$1.4 billion. The company specializes in solutions and services for connecting, managing, and optimizing IT resources in shared storage environments.

With offices on five continents, Brocade needed to keep employees connected with up-to-date information and with collaboration tools that were easy to use. However, an obsolete corporate intranet and disparate information storage systems and locations made sharing information difficult.

Employees rarely used the existing intranet because the content was neither comprehensive nor current. The internal Web site was not up-to-date because content owners found gathering and publishing information too frustrating. Thus, instead of using the intranet as a resource for accessing content, employees sent information requests to content managers through e-mail or searched for information in other locations.

Decentralized information access contributed to another problem, one that placed a burden on IT services. Content managers updated the intranet so infrequently that they often forgot how to use the publishing tool. Lacking familiarity with the tool, they turned to IT staff for help. “We had to retrain people every three to four months,” says Damon Roberson, Senior Manager of Collaborative and Web Technologies at Brocade Communications Systems.

The company’s help desk also struggled with frequent requests for help in finding information. “It was just a nightmare trying to direct people to the right resources,” says Roberson.

Employees also needed more collaboration tools to manage workflows and projects, but developing new applications was time-consuming and costly. For example, one workflow application designed to track changes and manage the review process took developers nearly four months to complete.

Brocade knew it needed better resources for managing information and would face further pressure as the company continued to grow through acquisition. In August, 2006, the company announced a major acquisition that would add more than 900 more employees and abruptly increase the company’s head count by nearly 40 percent. Brocade wanted to integrate the new employees smoothly and needed an information management solution in place before the acquisition was final.

To improve access to information for new and existing employees, Brocade sought to do more than merely improve content management. “I didn’t really think it was a content management problem,” says Roberson. “It was more of an overall platform problem. Collaboration was very much improvised, and we needed to get the right tools in place for employees and do a lot more streamlining before the acquisition happened.”

Solution

Roberson and his team started researching possible information management products in May 2006. The acquisition would become final at the end of January 2007, so that gave Brocade approximately eight months to research, test, and deploy a new solution. To save time and effort, Roberson wanted a product that had built-in collaboration, content management, and security features. Brocade evaluated content management and collaboration software from IBM and Microsoft, ultimately deciding that an upcoming release, Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, satisfied its requirements.

Now that employees can find information themselves, help-desk calls have gone down by 30 percent.  Damon Roberson Senior Manager, Collaborative and Web Technologies Brocade Communications Systems

Brocade already used Microsoft products in its IT environment and wanted an information management system that would integrate with existing technology like the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client and other Microsoft Office System programs. Integration with other applications was important because the company envisioned an information-sharing tool that was part of a greater collaboration strategy. “Employees were already using Microsoft technology for e-mail and instant messaging, so we thought that features like presence and contact information would be particularly helpful,” says Roberson.

Brocade visited a Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) at Mountain View, California. MTCs deliver technical expertise and guidance from industry leaders to help businesses successfully implement new solutions based on Microsoft technology. MTC resources are divided into three offerings—Strategy Briefing, Architecture Design Session, and a multi-week Proof of Concept Workshop. Brocade participated in Strategy Briefing and Proof of Concept sessions for additional insight into opportunities to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 for solving business challenges.

MTC participation helped Roberson confirm that SharePoint Server was compatible with existing technology and also with his own view of business collaboration. “Other vendors with whom we talked believed that collaboration starts on a server computer, whereas I believe it starts on the desktop. The Microsoft solution aligns more with that vision.”

Brocade next turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner EMC Corporation to help implement the SharePoint Server solution. EMC helps businesses develop processes and infrastructure to improve information management and storage. The company delivers comprehensive support, including project planning, implementation, data storage, and disaster recovery strategies.

Brocade also chose EMC because it has expertise in developing advanced solutions with Microsoft technologies. In particular, EMC Microsoft Practice brings expertise in information architecture, user experience, and server architecture to portal implementation projects. SharePoint Server was a pending product release and Brocade was concerned that few service providers would have the experience necessary to implement it successfully. However, “EMC came in with the confidence, skills, and resources to get the job done,” says Roberson.

Beginning in May 2006, Brocade created five different use scenarios or “showcases” to demonstrate how team members could use SharePoint Server to enhance collaboration. Roberson and his staff still needed to obtain final management approval to build the new intranet, and thought this would be the most effective approach. “I could have written the best white papers in the world on how people can use this platform to improve collaboration,” he says. “I could argue why it should be the standard, but people really wouldn’t understand until they saw it perform.”

The demonstration won the approval of the company’s top management, and in September 2006 Brocade put together a cross-functional team to deploy the new intranet. The team decided to install SharePoint Server on the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. For storage, Brocade installed a server farm that includes five Web server computers and uses Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition database software. The project went live in early January 2007, in time to welcome 900 new employees later that month.

The new employees were directed to an employee “onboarding” portal as soon as they joined the company. The portal was first created as one of the five demonstrations, and it was so successful that the company decided to use it in production. The portal includes video-on-demand with a welcome message from the Brocade management team, and it also provides instructions for performing tasks such as enrolling in benefits programs.

Each task for new employees is supported with links to resources. The system also sends managers a list of activities related to specific employees. For example, a manager might receive a reminder to schedule lunch and an introductory meeting with a new hire. Managers also monitor employee progress on the assigned tasks. “It is designed to assimilate employees into the company more quickly,” explains Roberson.

With help from EMC, Brocade also added a site to the intranet that has project management functions. The project management site has built-in site and forum templates to help employees plan and manage programs for customers, in addition to other critical projects. “We’re using templates to plan and monitor all of our product development programs,” says Roberson.

Brocade relied on EMC to build a product-focused online information resource center that would make it easy for the company’s sales and support staff to quickly and efficiently find the most relevant and recent product-specific information. The result is a simple-to-use application that allows users to search for content using the built-in search engine in SharePoint Server. It is also easy for content owners to post information directly to the resource center by taking advantage of the available content management mechanisms.

Branding also played an important role in the success of the project. The acquisition brought about changes to the entire Brocade brand portfolio, and Brocade wanted the collaboration portal to reflect that new brand identity. By taking advantage of EMC expertise in implementing user experience projects, Brocade and EMC created four design prototypes from which one design was chosen. Then graphical features and themes of the selected design were extended to meet the wide array of user interface needs, enabling the entire merged company to embrace its new branding look and feel.  
 
Employees now have central access to documents and other business data stored in Managed Document Repositories, a SharePoint Server feature. All content, whether personal or project-related, is developed for and delivered to different audiences in the company depending on each recipient's role. Employee credentials are stored in the Active Directory® service, which the company uses with SharePoint Server to control access and to deliver targeted content. “That security model is really one of the key parts of the SharePoint Server solution,” says Roberson.

The company’s plans include extending an extranet to outside partners and using SharePoint Server to measure job performance. The company will use tools such as key performance indicators to evaluate progress in meeting goals. “We will use the intranet to drive a more performance-based culture,” says Roberson.

Benefits

Brocade Communications Systems employees are more productive because they have better access to information through the Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution. They are using collaboration tools more frequently and effectively, which has reduced the need for IT support. In particular, help-desk calls have decreased by 30 percent because employees can find information more easily. Finally, the IT team can develop a custom workflow application quicker, which helps reduce costs and gives employees even more opportunities to collaborate and have greater impact in the company.

Content delivery through a central portal has helped dramatically in delivering up-to-date information to employees.  Damon Roberson Senior Manager, Collaborative and Web Technologies Brocade Communications Systems

Improved Information Access and Productivity

Brocade employees have improved efficiency by taking advantage of immediate access to current information. Before, human resources administrators were responsible for updating and delivering information. Now, an interactive intranet linked directly to corporate data sources delivers timely content. “Content delivery through a central portal has helped dramatically in delivering up-to-date information to employees,” says Roberson.

Access to current information helps new employees―including 900 new hires from a recent acquisition―start projects earlier and more easily. As a result, Brocade can benefit more quickly from the skills and knowledge the new employees bring to the company. “By using Office SharePoint Server 2007, we met our goal of getting employees integrated into the company faster,” Roberson says. “The faster they are assimilated, the more productive they are.”

Increased Use of Collaboration Tools

One of the biggest challenges Brocade faced was convincing employees to use a corporate intranet again. The previous Web site had discouraged users because it either lacked information or the content it offered was obsolete. However, the new intranet has started a different trend. Roberson and his team used measurement tools to compare current use with the same period in the prior year. They measured events such as site visits, downloads, and returning users. Even without including data from the new hire portal, the results were impressive. Roberson reports, “Our page views have increased by almost 230 percent. It’s a dramatic increase in use.”

Roberson has also noticed improvements in content publishing. He stresses that collaboration is not a technology change but a behavioral change. For example, employees can share information more efficiently by posting documents directly to the intranet for review rather than sending them to colleagues through e-mail messages. Although building new habits takes time, Roberson has already seen changes. “Managers are demonstrating to their employees that the collaboration tools are easy to use, and employees are following their example.”

Decreased Help-Desk Calls

IT staff members spend less time managing content, which increases the time they have available for more strategic projects. Before, corporate content was managed separately by administrators assigned to each major business function. Because access to information was decentralized, many employees turned to IT personnel for help finding data. “Now that employees can find information themselves, help-desk calls have gone down by 30 percent,” Roberson says.

Reduced Costs and More Options

Brocade has reduced costs because it can deliver applications faster. The company’s software developers recently built and delivered a workflow application in three days with tools that are available in SharePoint Server. In contrast, a similar application designed four years earlier took more than three months to develop. “Employees can put applications together very easily with the built-in development features,” says Roberson.

The ability to deliver new workflow applications quicker saves the company time and money, and employees have more options for collaborating and managing performance. Roberson points out that Brocade is a project-driven company, and as projects change he and his team can more effectively design solutions to support them.

Savings continue as employees become more independent, and as integrated management tools make administration easier and less costly. For example, employees can restore deleted information themselves without requiring IT support. “The integrated administration tools significantly reduce the time the IT team spends recovering information,” Roberson says.

With an interactive, Web-based content management solution Brocade employees are in charge of information and the company has a more engaged workforce as a result. Instead of asking IT staff to solve content management problems, employees now offer their own ideas for new ways of working with information.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about EMC Corporation products and services, call (508) 435-1000 or visit the Web site at:
www.emc.com

For more information about Brocade Communications Systems products and services, call (408) 333-8000 or visit the Web site at:
www.brocade.com

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Document published November 2007