Who are SEGA?
SEGA Europe, a division of Japan’s SEGA Sam-my Holdings, develops some 40 game titles a year for the international video game market. SEGA consistently ranks among the top 12 video game publishers worldwide, with annual revenue in excess of $1.6 billion. In Japan, SEGA holds the top spot among gaming software makers in revenue, topping Konami.
Why Cisilion?
Stuart Wright - Director IT & Networks
"Cisco and Cisilion provided architectural and technical expertise, knowledge of SEGA and a get it done approach.”
Snapshot:
As gaming is a highly lucrative industry, SEGA Europe was constantly under pressure to deliver fast and high-quality games. Cisilion designed and implemented the company with a network re-architecture, intrusion prevention and security solutions, as well as collaboration productivity solutions. Cisco was the go-to vendor within this project.
Challenges:
Game makers are entering the business in record numbers, forcing established companies to continually deliver faster, better, bug free games. SEGA were facing some challenges that impacted both their revenue and the market:
- Poor coordination between teams
- Technical delays
Solution:
Cisilion designed and built SEGA Europe a new unified networking and collaboration platform. The initiative eliminated more than half of the company’s network devices as it standardised on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switch, which formed the backbone of the new high bandwidth network. The solutions used included Integral Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Unity Connection technology, and a sophisticated collaboration platform built around WebEx and MeetingPlace Express to support online meetings and on-demand videoconferencing. To address security concerns, SEGA selected Cisco’s 5500 Adaptive Security solution creating a self-defending network architecture.
Benefits & numbers:
In addition to the true business transformational benefits of real-time collaboration, the solution delivered the following ROI elements:
- Reduced energy consumption by removal of over 60% of networked devices
- Slashed network operations support and maintenance resource requirements by nearly 80%
- Reduce vendor management by reducing from 30 vendors to 5
- Reduce travel costs by 20%
- Reducing development file transfers between design centres, QA and production from hours to minutes has dramatically improved the ability to deliver quality final production games on time