NTT Eliminates Data Center SLA Penalties of $100,000 Per Second with eMaint

NTT is one of the world’s largest providers and operators of wholesale data centers, with more than 160 locations in 20 countries across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia.

Global Data Centers Americas, a division of NTT, operates data center campuses in key U.S. markets such as Ashburn, Sacramento, Chicago, Hillsboro, Santa Clara, Dallas, and Phoenix.

Hyperscale data centers, like those operated by NTT, are designed to scale quickly in response to sudden increases in demand. Such rapid change is driven by cloud and edge computing and the expanding role of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

The centers are built for reliability, with tens of thousands of assets including large batteries, chillers, transfer switches and switch gears, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, and 10 to 20 diesel generators per building. Multiple equipment redundancies ensure backup if a problem occurs.

Lee McClish, manager of maintenance and reliability, joined NTT Global Data Centers Americas in 2017. Based on NTT’s Ashburn data center campus, his charge was to establish a facility-wide maintenance and reliability program for the company.

The software’s advanced features and increased customizability opened up new ways to optimize processes for NTT’s 20,000+ assets, giving the company a significant edge in a data center solutions market expected to reach USD 591.7 billion by 2028.

When the eMaint CMMS was first implemented, it was not fully optimized to leverage the system’s capabilities.

Company leaders decided to reimplement the system. McClish started by exploring its scope and documenting operational gaps as he went through the eMaint functions and features.

Several employees attended Xcelerate, the annual Fluke Reliability conference traditionally held in Florida, where maintenance and reliability professionals gather to network and consult with eMaint experts. There, McClish and his team got answers to their questions about the system’s potential, and upon their return, the transformation began to take form.

The vision and plan required buy-in from the team and the fostering of a culture centered on reliability.

“I would say you have to have a plan, and you have to have the vision, and you have to articulate it,” McClish says. “And you have to think about the end user. What’s going to save the team work?”

With his background as a mechanical engineer and RCM manager, McClish wanted to ensure that the entire company understood what it would take to build a reliability-focused maintenance program, and how eMaint could help.

Three days of onsite eMaint CMMS instruction took place at each facility. Additionally, the organization benefited from having a dedicated CMMS implementation specialist to help configure the software to meet NTT’s objectives.

McClish created a custom user’s guide and a detailed utilization plan to help set the foundation for continuous improvement. PMs were divided into four types and prioritized based on asset criticality. Task lists and standardized PM procedures were created. Managers were able to customize the system to fit individual facility needs.

NTT is required to carry out maintenance with the original equipment manufacturer’s technicians.Preventive Maintenance: The ability to create mandatory fields and optimize workflows and PMs helped achieve data entry consistency and maintenance management standardization across all facilities. One such area ensures that completed work orders contain the failure, cause, and remedy codes necessary for failure analysis and PM optimization.

The NTT team tracks the number of corrective or reactive tasks resulting from preventive maintenance with eMaint reporting to gauge the effectiveness of their program.

The dashboard also reveals how many reactive tasks were identified through preventive maintenance, each categorized by a failure cause remedy code at the closure of the maintenance work order. This approach helps progress NTT’s maintenance excellence plan, turning every routine check into a step towards better reliability and performance.

Audits: NTT is sometimes audited by customers that want to know how the company will deliver the required level of uptime. Using the CMMS, facility leaders can easily show documented maintenance activity and work-order completions. These specific activities reflect the level of effort expended toward improving equipment reliability and availability to support a customer’s required maximum uptime.

SLA Penalties: NTT can face service level agreement (SLA) penalties of as much as $100,000 per second for downtime that disrupts customers. Tracking reactive tasks with eMaint helps minimize these costs. The CMMS can identify month-to-month how many emergency work orders are produced and why — whether the issue stems from preventive maintenance, equipment malfunctions, or manufacturing defects.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Remediation: Identifying systemic issues with assets (for instance, noticing a pattern of newer NTT buildings having high rates of reactive and emergency work orders, even though the equipment in use was only a few months old) allows NTT to approach manufacturers with data-backed evidence, often securing millions of dollars in remediation.

Cost of Ownership: This ability to track the health of an asset with eMaint means that NTT can also calculate its total cost of ownership more accurately — a key metric for the company. NTT needs to know which equipment will last the longest and cost the least in maintenance to make smart equipment investments.

The NTT team uses eMaint work order tools to identify corrective and reactive equipment, assign parts, and determine total costs. They can generate workflows to produce warranty dates based on construction guidance and end-of-life timelines.

Armed with this insight into expenditure and asset lifespan, NTT can make smarter decisions about capital spending, when to purchase spare parts, and when to replace equipment.

Inventory Management: eMaint helps NTT manage spare parts more cost-efficiently. eMaint serves as the company’s “one source of truth,” tracking the total value of these spares (now over $3 million) and identifying where each part is located. This lets technicians quickly check if a part is available in any of the 17 facilities and arrange for its transfer — preventing unnecessary spending and downtime.

Mobile Efficiency: Given the vast size of data centers and the need to respond quickly and accurately when assets need attention, mobility becomes a key factor. This is why the eMaint mobile app is key for the NTT team.

Technicians can refer to the calendar scheduler to see all upcoming preventive and corrective maintenance tasks and access and work orders on the move, helping significantly reduce unplanned downtime.

Vendor Management: NTT is required to carry out maintenance with the original equipment manufacturer’s technicians. But coordinating this can be challenging. the eMaint vendor portal, however, makes this process simple and uncomplicated by allowing vendors to interact with eMaint directly. They can provide comments, add pictures and explanations, and even close out their own work orders. This makes compliance with client expectations — without excessive administrative effort — easy.

With eMaint, NTT maintains a competitive edge with improved maintenance tracking and better visibility into work planning, keeping operations agile and streamlined.

“eMaint is great because you can move fields around, you can tailor everything that you want to what you want, what format you want, where you want them on screens, what order on the screens. You can make it exactly the way you want it to work for you.”

– Lee McClish, Manager of Maintenance and Reliability, NTT Global Data Centers Americas