To successfully manage wide area network demand and escalating operating costs at Microsoft, Microsoft's IT group assembled a small, dedicated team, tasked with identifying and implementing ways to improve engineering, operating, and management efficiencies for overall bandwidth consumption. Their goals were to increase network efficiency by 12 percent and reduce costs by nine percent. Through strategies such as the rigorous auditing of existing bandwidth usage, and more accurate forecasting of future bandwidth needs, existing capacity was utilized more efficiently and carrier vendor relationships were maximized.
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