Inteva Products, LLC

Large scale spin-off company must realize comprehensive global
communications between sites from the ground up
Rapid network construction without adding a lot of technical resources

As a tier one auto supplier, Inteva primarily provides different parts from sunroofs and interior components to door latches, motors, and electronics to a variety of automakers around the world. Mr. Dennis Hodges of Inteva describes his company's scope of activities: "We're in eighteen countries with forty locations. We're a little over two and a half billion dollar a year business. We count the largest automakers in the world as our customers, so it's a very interesting business from an IT challenge as well.” While Inteva was a spin-off, it wasn't small. Mr. Hodges describes the global demands and large-scale challenges that demanded solutions from the inception of the company:
"When we spun off from our former parent Delphi, we were given a transition service agreement which lasted for about a year and a half. During that time, we were forced to use a particular networking company. In that situation, things just didn't work out that well because they really didn't focus on a company of our size. The original architecture from the company that provided service for us before NTT Communications was very much a different organizational and technical specification. The differences were quite tremendous versus what we needed. They were focused on connecting only small sites between the old company's infrastructure, whereas we were much more interested in being able to get to the internet, and being able to provide communications between different sites that they had not focused on in the past.”

NTT Communications accelerates Inteva’s global expansion and business growth

The Inteva leadership decided to find a true global communications partner, not just a network provider. NTT Communications was selected on the promise of shattering the limitations of traditional telecom services. "NTT Communications really understood that we were global and complex, and they were able to step in and provide all the services and equipment that we needed," says Mr. Hodges.

NTT Communications’ proposed Software-Defined Network Service (SD-NS) – service brand of NTT Communications’ SD-WAN Service Portfolio – realizes network hardware functionality with software. Eliminating the need for hardware equipment installation at each site, this solution utilizing Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology dramatically simplifies the network and realizes rapid deployment of a secure and high speed network environment. It gives Inteva greater agility and scalability, as well as eliminating the need for manual device configuration at the network edge.

NTT Communications also addressed Inteva’ s need for legacy network monitoring and problem resolution through its end-to-end operations management, freeing up the client’ s IT resources for more strategic projects. "With the traditionally hosted network environment, it's very often the case that the technicians are trying to keep the circuits up, trying to keep the routers and switches online, and it's a full time job for anyone. With NTT Communications, they've taken that role and, through the managed service capability where they run that environment for us, we're able to think more about where we are trying to go next, what we would like to connect from a larger business solution perspective rather than from a technical architecture perspective,” says Mr.Hodges.

NTT Communications' global reach in more than 190 countries and abundant experience with local carriers and vendors were also highly evaluated by Inteva. "NTT Communications was able to provide the breadth and scope across the globe. When you're trying to do networking and you're moving into seven locations in China, and you have no infrastructure in the country, it can be a dicult task. NTT Communications has the ability to go around the globe to source circuits across a number of vendors.“ Enhancing global operations with zero downtime was critical to Inteva. Mr. Hodges mentions that NTT Communications provides outstanding support and he has never experienced a network outage over the past eight years.

“Ninety percent of the tickets that are raised for new problems that we have come directly to us from NTT Communications. We don't raise the tickets ourselves. So they're finding the problems before we do."

End-to-end managed networking allows
Inteva’s IT to focus on strategic business initiatives

By offloading core network management to NTT Communications, Inteva is able to focus on the strategic requirements of the business, instead of IT needs.

"NTT Communications has really been key for Inteva in the ability to grow and expand without adding a lot of technical resources to the IT team. My focus within IT at Inteva is not to provide circuits and routers and switches and servers, it's to provide business analysis to the organization. People like NTT Communications are key for us in that they're an extension of our internal team, so they focus on the work, and we focus on the business analysis of how do we make money, how do we grow the business as a company,” says Mr.Hodges, “I think we can say that from a partnership perspective, NTT Communications kind of sets the goal for our organization. It's a discussion as to what we really need, which is important from my side. It's exactly what I would expect my internal networking team to discuss and go through all the different challenges and issues that are out there.”

Mr. Hodges and fellow company executives are very satisfied with the Inteva and NTT Communications relationship. "They know what our goals in life are. And that's a big part of being a partner, is that they understand what we're trying to accomplish. I have recommended NTT Communications to peers and other customers that are out there looking at potential replacements of their network, and particularly companies that are starting up. NTT Communications provides a very, very reliable, very proactive service at a very good price.”

Inteva recently extended its agreement with NTT Communications through 2021, with a major increase in bandwidth and greater internet capacity.

You can see customer testimonial video.