Category Archives: NTT

hybrid cloud, IaaS, News & Analysis, NTT, Private Cloud

NTT makes play for IaaS

NTT CommunicationsNTT Communications has announced the deployment of managed private cloud solutions to HPE and NTT customers in the US in a play for the IaaS market.

Although not hitting the headlines as regularly as competitors such as AWS, Google and Microsoft, NTT has been recognized in the IaaS market by Gartner, and does already have a strong presence in the US market. Although noted as a niche player the IaaS segment, NTT does offer two platforms to global customers; NTT Enterprise Cloud and Cloudn. Gartner has noted the NTT does little to differentiate itself from the rest of the market, though it does have a healthy ecosystem of partners to compensate.

The new proposition will enable joint customers of HPE and NTT to purchase the company’s IaaS portfolio solutions, including cloud migration services, data centre consolidation, managed infrastructure services, and disaster recovery-as-a-service. The NTT team claim it is one of HPE’s first service provider partners capable of providing managed private cloud environments using the new HPE Helion CloudSystem.

“NTT America, the U.S. subsidiary of NTT Com, provides flexible, agile and cost-effective private hybrid cloud solutions to the NTT Com and HPE customer base,” said Indranil Sengupta, Regional Vice President of Product Management at NTT America. “These solutions can be delivered at NTT Com data centres, customer premises or at third party data centres.

“The solution architecture allows customers to leverage their current investments and augment with additional services that they need to run their business efficiently. All of NTT Com’s cloud solutions focus on the five key considerations of security, compliance, migration, legacy integration and change management.”

While a niche player in the market, the move could represent a strategic win for the NTT team, who already has a healthy reputation in North America, and a growing customer base. It would also be considered a timely move as trends in the industry are leaning more towards multi-cloud propositions, where decision makers are more open to working with different cloud providers for different workloads and data sets.

Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, NTT, SAP

NTT achieves SAP Global Certification

multi cloudNTT Comms has achieved SAP Global Certification for hosting services, cloud services and SAP HANA operations services.

The certification will enable NTT to build and manage SAP applications by utilizing the company’s enterprise cloud and its Global Management One platform. The offering will be made available on all NTT infrastructures across private, public and hybrid clouds, through a consumption-based delivery model.

“We’re set to see more organizations place key infrastructure and applications in the cloud. However, for global enterprises it is often a difficult and complex journey,” said Damian Skendrovic, CEO at NTT Comms Managed Services. “Our new cloud solutions for SAP put our customers in pole position to migrate to the cloud and manage their applications more effectively. This ensures that business operations are enhanced as quickly as possible and without disruption.”

To achieve the certification, a provider’s cloud platform must undertake comprehensive testing by SAP to authorize the integration with its complete application set. Aside from the company’s infrastructure being tested against the standards, NTT’s technical staff in the EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific regions were also placed under the same scrutiny.

Outside of the managed services business unit, the NTT team have continued efforts to diversify its revenue channels and grow its business in new markets. NTT Data recently announced plans to acquire Dell Services for $3.06 billion, as it prioritized growth in international markets.

“NTT Data is pleased with the unique opportunity to acquire such high-calibre talent, and a corporate culture that shares common values with NTT Data, with emphasis on client first, foresight, teamwork and a commitment to innovation,” said Toshio Iwamoto, President and CEO of NTT Data Corporation. “Welcoming Dell Services to NTT DATA is expected to strengthen our leadership position in the IT Services market and initiates an important business relationship with Dell.”

The acquisition is the fourth made by NTT over the course of 2016, though it would appear that EMC are not in such a favourable position. Dell Services as a business unit was reportedly to be valued in the region of $5 billion, which could highlight Dell’s urgency in completing the sale. If reports are correct, it would appear NTT Data has negotiated a good deal.

Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, NTT

NTT announces five major additions to Enterprise Cloud

NTT cloud diagramJapan’s NTT Communications (NTT Com) has announced five major improvements to its Enterprise Cloud in a bid to become the chosen vehicle for digital transformation. The new enhanced Enterprise Cloud is immediately available in Japan, and will be rolled out in the UK, Singapore, US, Australia, Hong Kong and Germany later this year.

According to NTT Com, enterprises want to make the difficult crossing from traditional IT to the cloud but need greater support. In response, it has announced that its new Enterprise Cloud offering will make the journey easier. The new improved offerings are described by NTT Com as Hosted Private Cloud for traditional ICT, Multi Tenant Cloud for cloud native ICT, seamless hybrid clouds, free and seamless connections between cloud platforms and a cloud management platform to give full visibility and governance.

NCC Com said enterprises with cloud ambitions face two major challenges: migration of their traditional systems and, having gone to the cloud, changing their mode of development-operations to fit the new ‘cloud native’ application culture.

NTT Com outlined how each of these five Enterprise Cloud ‘enhancements’ will help its target clients. The Hosted Private Cloud for Traditional ICT now consists of dedicated bare-metal servers with options for multi-hypervisor environments, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. The logic of the service is to make it easier for companies with traditional ICT to migrate to a hosted private cloud.

The Enterprise-class Multi-tenant Cloud for Cloud-Native ICT is based on OpenStack architecture, giving customers an industry-standard open API to control the Enterprise Cloud. It comes with Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software from Cloud Foundry in order to provide Dev-Ops efficiencies. The open architecture was needed to address customer concerns about vendor lock-ins, says NTT Com.

The Seamless Hybrid Cloud Environment is created for clients by NTT Com configuring all the relevant network components (the virtual servers, bare-metal servers, firewalls and load balancers) running on complex on-premises environments.

The promised ‘Free and Seamless Connection between Cloud Platforms’ is made by connecting the Enterprise Cloud with a 10Gbps best-effort closed network, free of charge. In addition, connectivity between Enterprise Cloud platforms and data centres is provided at ‘competitive’ prices globally, said NTT Com.

Finally, the new Cloud Management Platform (CMP) promises full visibility and IT governance by unifying the control of both Enterprise Cloud and third-party providers’ clouds, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

HPE, IaaS, News & Analysis, NTT, Telco Cloud

HPE to give customer access to IaaS from NTT Communications

HPE customers can now get instant infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from NTT Communications portfolio following an agreement with the Japanese telco’s NTT America division.

The enterprise level service offers public, private and hybrid cloud options, plus NTT America’s professional services including cloud migration, data centre consolidation, managed infrastructure services and disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS).

Demand for IaaS is rising, according to analyst Transparency Market Research which says the $15.6 billion online infrastructure market of 2014 will grow to become a $73.9 billion IaaS trade by 2022.

NTT American will be one of a few global IaaS partners to HPE, said its executive VP of Global Enterprise Services Jeffrey Bannister. Only integration of best of breed technologies within NTT’s own infrastructure can help customers stay ahead of their competition, said Bannister.

NTT Com’s secure network coverage (VPN) reaches 196 countries through a Tier 1 IP network and it has 140 data centres across the world with an enterprise-grade cloud footprint in 14 global markets and a planned expansion to 15.

In August BCN reported how NTT Com launched a multi-cloud connect service with direct private links to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and other top tier cloud service providers.

What was once a disruptive innovation is the new norm as businesses shift to off-premise systems, said Chuck Adams, HPE’s Partner Ready Service Provider Programme director. “IaaS is IT infrastructure without the overhead,” said Adams.

Docomo, GE, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, NTT

GE, NTT Docomo to form Internet of Things alliance

GE and NTT are jointly developing IoT solutions for industrial applications

GE and NTT are jointly developing IoT solutions for industrial applications

GE Energy Japan and Japanese operator NTT Docomo signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) this week that will see the two companies commit to jointly developing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for industrial uses.

The companies will combine GE Digital Energy’s MDS Orbit Platform, a wireless router for industrial equipment, and Docomo’s embedded communication module, which will provide remote access and monitoring capabilities.

The solution will be capable of monitoring tightly regulated (and hazardous) infrastructure like bridges and electricity, water and gas power plants for fitness and operational productivity.

The data generated by the embedded monitoring sensors will be sent to Docomo’s Toami cloud platform, designed primarily for M2M use cases, and users will be able to manage and analyse the data using strongly authenticated mobile platforms.

GE is an M2M veteran – in aviation and energy it was doing IoT well before the term became en vogue – and NTT Docomo already partners with a number of other technology incumbents embedded in the IoT arena including Panasonic and Jasper Wireless. Its parent, NTT Group, is also fairly active in other IoT initiatives. The company is working with both ARM and Intel on their respective IoT platforms.

Like many in this space the companies are keen to capture a chunk of growing IoT revenues, with the IoT and M2M communications market in particular forecast to swell from $256bn in 2014 to $947bn in 2019 (an estimated 30 per cent CAGR) according to MarketsandMarkets.

BCN and our sister publication Telecoms.com have put together a report on what the industry perceives to be the top benefits and challenges in consumer and industrial IoT. You can download it for free here.