Want to Cut Labor Costs 50-75% Move Your NOC to India MSP Me

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Unify Square saves money and taps a richer pool

of IT talent by operating a Network Operations

Center in tech-friendly Gurgaon, India, outside of

New Delhi.

Thinkstockphotos.com

MSPmentor

Aldrin Brown (/author/aldrin-brown)

Apr 27, 2016

Lower costs and access to a rich IT talent pool are among the benefits of Unify Square's

offshore Network Operations Center in tech-friendly Gurgaon, India, outside of New Delhi.

MSPmentor caught up recently with

Dimitri Blondeel, senior director of

PowerAssurance services at managed

"Skype for Business" provider Unify

Square

(http://www.unifysquare.com/index.php), to discuss the Bellevue, Wash., firm'sthinking and experience in launching and operating an offshore Network Operations

Center in tech-friendly Gurgaon (http://gurgaon.gov.in/), India, outside of New Delhi

(http://www.delhitourism.gov.in/delhitourism/index.jsp).

Related



MSPM: Describe the process that led to the decision to set up the NOC

offshore.

Dimitry Blondeel: When setting up our Smart Remote Managed Services Business

(which we call PowerAssurance (http://www.unifysquare.com/skype-for-business-

managed-services)™) we decided that a central NOC would be the most optimized

model versus a follow-the-sun model for many reasons. First, it provides consistent

quality 24x7. Second, we wanted to avoid complicated and error-prone hand-off

processes (we currently overlap shifts and there’s a one-hour overlap to facilitate

smooth transition). Third, we wanted to work with dedicated service specialists and

not with consultants who “masquerade” as NOC personnel providing support.

We decided to set the NOC offshore for many reasons:

1. It is increasingly hard to find qualified Skype for Business (SfB) staff in the US or

EMEA who have the proper amount of skills and experience;

2. It is even harder to retain staff specializing in SfB in the US or EMEA;

3. Having an NOC offshore gives us a competitive advantage through more cost-

efficient labor;

4. We like the mentality of the India workforce (hard working, dependable, smart);

5. We found that the old “stereotype” of an off-shore workforce having poor and/or

unintelligible English language skill sets could be easily offset by a more rigorousinterview process.

We decided on India (and eventually, more specifically, Gurgaon – more on that later)

for the reasons described above and because we had an existing professional

relationship with the people who later became our local management team.

Because of the automation power of our PowerSuite

(http://www.unifysquare.com/skype-for-business-powersuite)™ software, which is

the backbone of our PowerAssurance operations, we determined that we would be able

to very effectively create a “SMART” remote managed service which lent itself quite

well to an offshore orientation.

MSPM: Was there an existing NOC elsewhere that was closed down to set

up the NOC in India?

DB: No, at the time this was a new line of business for Unify Square and we wanted to

be aggressive and innovative by starting it out from Day One as a remote NOC from

India.

Unify Square Touts Revamped ‘Skype for Business’ Managed Service.

(http://mspmentor.net/msp-mentor/unify-square-touts-revamped-skype-

business-managed-service)

»

Microsoft's Communications Play: Skype, Lync and BYOD.

(http://mspmentor.net/platforms/microsofts-communications-play-skype-lync-

and-byod)

»



MSPM: When did you set up that NOC?

DB: We started in a shared facility with a skeleton team in late 2012, and we had a fully

operational and fully staffed NOC by the middle of 2013.

MSPM: Describe the process for setting up the NOC.

DB: First, we hired the local management team. With their help and our US operations

team with roots in India, we found the following partners:

• Real estate consultant

• Accountant/fiscal/legal advisor

• Payroll agency

• Recruitment agency We first moved into a business center facility that was customized for 24x7 operations

and adequately secured. We hired our first five service engineers and acquired our first

three PowerAssurance customers in 2013. At the time, we already had one of the

largest and most successful global Skype for Business consulting businesses. We grew

our customer base and increased smart remote managed services headcount over the

next two years (to 24 Service Engineers), while doubling the surface rented in the

business center to accommodate for the growth. Around September 2015, we decided

to rent our own facility and outfit it to meet our needs. We worked with our local real

estate consultant to deal with the owner of the building and close the leasing contract.

We selected an outfitting company that did an excellent job designing the place andproject managing the contractors (we personally selected the vendor by talking to all of

them in person). Then we moved in. We are now staffed at 50 plus people in our NOC,

which is designed to house 100.

MSPM: How did you identify and engage the real estate?

DB: We identified the campus where we wanted to be through many visits to the area

over the years. We wanted an attractive address that appealed both to (prospective)

customers and employees, so we chose the most prestigious campus in Northern India

(DLF Cyber City in Gurgaon, located just south of downtown New Delhi). This campus

is also used by most of the other recognizable high-tech companies in the world – Dell,

IBM, Accenture, etc. We worked with our real estate agent (trusted advisor through

existing personal relationship with our leadership team) to secure the deal.

MSPM: How did you go about finding, hiring and training the workforce?



DB: Our initial team was hired through personal recommendation by our local

management team. We have a very attractive referral bonus system in place and many

of the team members were introduced to us by their future colleagues. We work with a

very capable recruitment agency.

MSPM: How did you go about equipping the facility?

DB: Furniture, etc. was handled by the outfitter. IT Equipment and installation was

handled by our own internal IT. We usually buy our equipment locally, quite

frequently from Dell.

MSPM: Describe the nature of the work being done there?

DB: Our teams in India manage the newest version of our smart remote managed

service offering for Skype for Business, PowerAssurance. Different from traditional

managed services, which are manual and reactive, PowerAssurance combines thepower of human expertise with our PowerSuite software automation to proactively

audit the total health and system availability of Skype for Business. The result is a

significant reduction in costs associated with managing Skype for Business.

PowerAssurance reduces required headcount to manage Skype for Business by an

average of 88 percent and increases efficiency scores by at least 30 percent.

MSPM: How does communication work between the domestic and the

remote locations? What is the frequency and what are the circumstances

of phone calls, video conferences and physical travel?DB: I travel to India four times per year. The service delivery personnel who are based

in the US and EMEA as key project manager/liason between customers, and our NOC

travel one to two times per month. India NOC personnel fly from India to the US for

advanced PowerSuite trainings and as required.

We utilize our SfB technology to have multiple conference calls per day between the

service delivery team and India. We also have a daily standing one on one SfB call with

the local India manager of the NOC operation.

MSPM: Can you describe the tariffs, taxes or other similar costs associated

with being a foreign entity trading in India.

DB: We do not invoice from India - our NOC is a pure cost center and depends on

internal transfers. Internal transfers are “cost+” - we take the entire cost of the India

operation (salaries, real estate, etc.) and add a cost percentage. Indian tax authorities



tax us on the resulting “gross profit.” This is a very common practice. The cost for

business licenses, etc. are negligible. We did spend some money on consultants when

we set up the local business.

MSPM: Please characterize the CAPEX and OPEX savings of the NOC in

India, as compared to a similar operation in the US. As part of this, can you compare wages?

DB: CAPEX was pretty similar to what we would expect in the US. Real estate is on par

with a lower cost location in the US, but that is only because of the prime location we

have chosen. Wages are somewhere between 25-50 percent of US wages.

MSPM: Is that NOC operation adequate to meet your near-term needs or

do you anticipate outgrowing it in the future?

DB: We anticipate outgrowing our current NOC in the next 12 months, at which time we will likely scale out to a secondary NOC in Southern India in order to diversify and

capture another rich labor market of SfB expertise.

MSPM: To your knowledge, how pervasive are MSPs with NOCs or SOCs in

India?

DB: The abundance of cost-effective talent overseas will drive more and more MSPs to

offshore in India. We could not have set up our business to have become so quickly

cost effective and reputable elsewhere, for lack of available talent and/or talent that

was too expensive to procure in the US or EMEA. We definitely view our set-up inIndia as a huge competitive advantage.

MSPM: Is there anything else noteworthy about your efforts in India from

which you think the broader MSP community might benefit?

DB: In spite of how easy my answers to these questions perhaps make it sound, it is not

easy to do business in India. Although the government is making real efforts, it is still

difficult to transfer money to India to do the necessary investments. Additionally,

there is still a lot of corruption in local agencies, travel from the US to India is hard(Visas are regularly refused for no clear reason, the flights are very long, poverty may

shock many travelers, and the climate is rough). There is a different business culture

to deal with, and you have to be ready for that.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Unify Square

executive who responded to written questions from MSPmentor.



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Want to Cut Labor Costs 50-75% Move Your NOC to India MSP Me