NTT Communications Corporation, the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group, announced that it has unveiled dramatic enhancements to its innovative cloud solution, Enterprise Cloud.
The enhanced Enterprise Cloud is immediately available in Japan, and will be rolled out in the UK, Singapore, US, Australia, Hong Kong and Germany this year.
NTT Com is launching its enhanced Enterprise Cloud to help enterprises meet the complex requirements of digital transformation — the application of digital technology across multiple aspects of their businesses to unleash creativity, grow faster and maintain market leadership. Their challenge is twofold.
On one hand, enterprises are seeking to migrate traditional ICT to the cloud for more effective ICT operations and cost optimisation; on the other, driven by mobile, social, big-data, IoT and other digital technologies, they are deploying cloud-native applications and shifting toward a DevOps culture that supports rapid innovation. To meet these challenges, NTT Com’s enhanced Enterprise Cloud provides a comprehensive platform for both traditional and cloud- native ICT, as well as network connectivity, colocation service and third-party cloud.
“As enterprise businesses move towards digitalisation, globalisation and cloud, NTT Com will continue to help customers innovate business processes and create new business models with Enterprise Cloud, which has been enhanced to meet requirements of both secure and reliable ICT and flexible and agile ICT,” said Motoo Tanaka, senior vice president of Cloud Services at NTT Com.
New and Enhanced Capabilities:
(1) Hosted Private Cloud for Traditional ICT
Enterprise Cloud’s hosted private cloud now consists of dedicated bare-metal servers with the automation, pay-as-you-go flexibility and options of a multi-hypervisor environment, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. It also provides a highly flexible internal network, which facilitates the re-use of on-premises network architecture in the cloud. Enterprise customers can realise cloud-enabled traditional ICT by seamlessly migrating to the hosted private cloud any on-premises systems that require a dedicated environment for reasons of performance, security or licensing. Such migrations contribute to the optimisation of traditional ICT environments and form a foundation for further cloud-based digital transformation.
(2) Enterprise-class Multi-tenant Cloud for Cloud-Native ICT
The Enterprise Cloud now features a secure and highly reliable, enterprise-class multi-tenant cloud based on the OpenStack architecture, which therefore gives customers an industry-standard open API to control the Enterprise Cloud in an automated manner. In addition, by incorporating Cloud Foundry, an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software, the Enterprise Cloud provides PaaS for agile application development and operational efficiency. This gives customers enterprise-class service quality as well as effective management of agile and Dev-Ops oriented application development. The open architecture meanwhile relieves concerns about vendor lock-in and accelerates customers’ digital business strategies.
(3) Seamless Hybrid Cloud Environment
The enhanced Enterprise Cloud’s multi-tenant cloud and hosted private cloud are connected at Layer 2 with SDN, which gives customers the power to flexibly and seamlessly configure the network components (virtual server, bare-metal server, firewall, load balancer) running on a complex on-premises environment in the same network segment. As a result, customers can reduce approximately 30% of the workload required for the network and server re-configuration that usually comes with cloud migration.
(4) Free and Seamless Connection between Cloud Platforms
The enhanced Enterprise Cloud platform is connected with a 10Gbps best-effort closed network, which is free of charge. In addition, connectivity between Enterprise Cloud platforms and data centers is provided at competitive prices globally, utilising NTT Com’s infrastructure as a telecom carrier. These network capabilities enable enterprises to optimise their ICT systems, for instance by sharing CAD data with regional suppliers or collecting sensor data, as the data transfer and system collaboration on cloud platforms and data centers are easy to use, and either free of charge or low cost. Cloud capabilities like these support digital transformation on a global scale, dramatically improving the performance and reach of enterprises’ global business.
(5) Cloud Management Platform (CMP) for Full Visibility and IT Governance
NTT Com is launching CMP for the efficient management and unified control of both Enterprise Cloud and third-party providers’ clouds, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. CMP also enables customer management and operation of hybrid clouds and meets the IT governance, cost control, security management and automated ICT operational requirements needed to successfully execute a cloud-first digital transformation strategy companywide.
Future Roadmap
NTT Com will continue to enhance its capabilities such as SDx-enabled unification of cloud, world-class data centers and global network assets. The OpenStack-based micro service architecture of Enterprise Cloud enables NTT Com to incorporate the latest technology advancements coming from both open source communities and its technology partners. Some of the new functions NTT Com plans to launch for enterprises include SAP HANA, virtual private PaaS and enhanced cloud management capabilities, to further support the digital transformation journeys of its enterprise customers.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @ VanillaPlusMag OR @jcvplus
