Logicalis

Logicalis implements network and phone system for new headquarters of Inc. 500 superstar Tableau Software

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Ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the 25 fastest-growing software companies in the prestigious Inc. 500 listing, Tableau Software is the leading provider of fast analytics, data visualization and business intelligence software. Its award-winning applications enable anyone to easily create and share interactive data visualizations, dashboards and analytics, and is scalable to organizations of any size or reach.

When Tableau was planning its move to new headquarters in Seattle, the executive management (which includes Pat Hanrahan, a founding member of Pixar and chief architect for its RenderMan software that made the “Toy Story” characters so lifelike) wanted to leave its phone and network growing pains behind. They also wanted to be able to communicate with designers in their San Mateo office as if they were just down the hall.

No Excuses
Tableau Director of IT Carey Fujii was under a lot of pressure. “We can’t have this not work,” Fujii remembers being told by the CFO. “He was very upfront. This is a mission critical project and system, and your job is to ensure its success; no excuses.”

Fujii was duly careful. He turned to account executive Mark Meyer at Logicalis to discuss the best networking technology for the job, as well as the best approach and implementation. Fujii had worked with Meyer in the past so there was a high comfort level.

Price and Performance
Performance and price convinced Tableau to go with a new Cisco phone system in the San Mateo office and a totally new network infrastructure in the new headquarters. Once the decision was made to install a complete set of Cisco gear including firewalls, switches and phones, Fujii—with the backing of his CFO--decided to bring in Logicalis Professional Services to implement the new network and ensure that everything went smoothly. “We decided to have Logicalis take ownership for getting us up and running,” he says.

At the kick-off meeting for the implementation Fujii told the Logicalis team, “We have to feel that this is your most important engagement. That’s how it’s got to be,” he adds. “And it was. The whole team was very responsive. In IT you know you’re going to work at all hours, so Sunday night at 8pm you send off an email and Jay Kim, the Logicalis network engineer on the data side would respond at 9. Pard [Mahatthanatrakul], the voice guy would respond at 2 AM Indianapolis time.

“It was great experience.”

High Profile
There was a lot of work to do. To ensure that communications would continue to work uninterrupted for the entire organization, the strategy was to maintain the existing headquarters, upgrade the San Mateo office and install the new system in the new Seattle office, and have all three up and running until everyone was settled into the new headquarters. This was an extremely high profile event and there was a zero tolerance for downtime.

“In the end,” Fujii reports, “It worked flawlessly. The work Logicalis did was outstanding.”

In the process of installing the new gear, the architecture of the network infrastructure was also streamlined so that it requires a lot less management overhead. “It’s easier to manage. It’s faster, and the topography lends itself to higher performance for our developers, which they’re very happy about. So, it’s a huge win,” Fujii says.

And people noticed.

Positive Feedback
“Before the move,” Fujii says, “you’d hear people say, ‘Sometimes I can connect to that server and sometimes I can’t.’ Or, ‘Gee. Why is it taking so long to copy this over?’ Now you hear people say, ‘Gee, the network really pops!’ The sales department says there are no quality issues on the phones anymore. No news is always good news in IT,” he notes, “but when we ask people directly what they think, they say, ‘It’s great!’”

With the new voice and data platform in place, Tableau is still growing into its capabilities and recently implemented Cisco Unified Workplace License (CUWL) to extend the full suite of unified communications features to its entire staff.

Fujii adds, “Both the CEO and CFO told me personally that what we accomplished was game changing for the company. They are very pleased.”