Continuum transforms design consultations with video collaboration anywhere anytime

With 230 employees positioned throughout offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Milan, Seoul and Shanghai, facilitating regular meetings with its experts was a consistent challenge for Continuum from a logistics and cost management standpoint. After exploring a number of options, video conferencing emerged as a viable collaboration solution, allowing Continuum’s consultants to meet anywhere and at any time, to brainstorm and discuss their latest breakthroughs. While the approach was sound in theory, the limitations of video conferencing delivered through the company’s legacy network proved to be a major disappointment.

With poor image and audio quality, frustrating latency and all-around subpar performance, the once exciting alternative proved ineffective and was used only three to four times annually. Despite Continuum’s disappointing experience with its initial video conferencing solution, the IT leadership team went undeterred. The company gravitated toward a high definition (HD) video conferencing system, but it soon became apparent a network upgrade was needed to take full advantage of the HD system.

Recognized results

• Increased network reliability and performance
• Improved application visibility and performance
• Enhanced security posture
• Accommodated global expansion
• Increased productivity and collaboration

As a global firm, Continuum found itself dealing with multiple service providers for its corporate network, the company wanted one service provider for all office locations and sought a seamless network with end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for its business applications. Also, as a mid-size company, Continuum did not have dedicated network staff to manage local loop providers, especially during network provisioning or service disruptions. The company needed a partner that could provide the performance, guidance, and expertise necessary to design, implement and manage its entire corporate network.

Solutions

As their quest to find a suitable network provider continued, the IT leaders at Continuum were advised to explore Masergy. Continuum was also expanding globally, and needed a network to support its video and collaboration solutions.

After thorough analysis, Continuum selected Masergy’s powerful network platform and unique approach to personalized customer service to meet its needs. Continuum was particularly impressed by the fact that Masergy dedicated time to understand its business challenges and then designed a customized solution. After evaluating Continuum’s corporate applications and typical usage models, Masergy implemented:

• MPLS for secure and reliable inter-office communications
• Internet Plus on the same access circuit for Internet connection
• Video Service plane to deliver exceptional quality of service for video conferencing
• Intelligent Network Analyst for real-time bandwidth visibility and control

Business success

With a painless implementation process, Masergy’s experts and network delivered as promised. Masergy’s network platform is ideal for Continuum’s HD video conferencing system, as well as other business applications. The video conferencing system, which was previously utilized only a few times per year is now used daily among Continuum’s office locations. This has allowed the company to dramatically improve productivity and collaboration, while solidifying it’s global presence. In addition to the business enhancements, festivities such as holiday parties are now experienced via HD video conferencing among offices in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

This type of team-building was never before possible without costly and time-consuming travel. Masergy’s network also reliably delivers business applications including enterprise VoIP, file sharing and other professional services applications. Additionally, Continuum has implemented WAN acceleration on the network, which has further enhanced connectivity and performance.

With Masergy’s Intelligent Network Analyst service, Continuum can easily evaluate, analyze and monitor network activity and application performance. Although reconfiguration is rarely necessary, the tool provides peace of mind that when bandwidth upgrades are required they can be made in real-time.

Masergy serves as Continuum’s valued network partner, providing counsel when needed and seamlessly operating its business network.