Vol.5 No.2 (June, 2010)

Special Issue on Cloud Computing

Cloud-oriented Service Platform Solutions

UENO Masayuki

The cloud computing market is growing in the fields of consumer services and enterprise front-office task, with American IT vendors currently playing a leading role. On the other hand, by entering these fields at an early stage NEC is providing “Cloud-oriented Service Platform Solutions” designed to support mission critical enterprise systems. This paper introduces the concept of enterprise cloud computing utilization from the perspectives of its fundamental nature, solutions for enterprises and the technologies applied in its adoption.

TSUKAHARA Osamu ・TSUJI Takao ・KOTAKE Hitoshi ・KUNO Futoshi

NEC Group is reforming its management system in order to achieve its goal of “One NEC”. We are reducing and restructuring costs while strengthening internal controls. This will be achieved by steering away from our previous dispersed system to a new centralized system, standardizing our business operations (business processes, IT, codes, infrastructure), and shifting from individual ownership to shared usage based on cloud computing. Furthermore, the assets and know-how gained through these reforms will be turned into services that will play a role in maturing our cloud-oriented service business.

Cloud-oriented Service Platform Solutions/Services (consulting, SaaS)

KIKUCHI Noriko ・OKU Kazuya ・KURATA Yoji

In order to deal effectively with changes in the business environment, a review of the management mechanism itself is necessary. A solution to this issue might be to promote “standardization of the business process and of IT” and to optimize the management system by means of “IT, without owing it.” This paper introduces a service for achieving this solution called the “Business Model Consulting Service.” This is a compilation of our experience with NEC’s own management system technique reforms, and its application to the “cloud-oriented accounting service” by which the global accounting system environment built by NEC can be shared with users.

AOKI Eiji

Municipal governments are currently affected by severe financial conditions and are facing significant issues in endeavoring to achieve IT cost reductions and to promote business process reforms (BPR).In order to resolve these issues, NEC has released the mission-critical business process solution service “GPRIME for SaaS.” The service provides a comprehensive IT business process for municipal governments based on the SaaS model. Various advantages are featured and these include low cost and short term system introductions compared to those of the conventional customized systems building model. Also featured are reduced burden for staff members in performing the routine operations of system administration and in dealing with revisions to legal regulations.

KATO Hirohisa ・CHIHAMA Yuko

Financial institutions are promoting their business process reform (BPR) in order to effectively deal with the current highly competitive market. In order to strengthen their sales performances they are focusing on the reform of their front offices by shifting from “a place of business operation” to “a base for consultation and sales activities.” The BPR will reduce the cost of staff employment and of IT facilities so that enterprises will be enabled to invest any surplus funds created by the BPR to increase profit-earning power or to create new services for their customers and they will thus be able to more easily achieve their target growth strategies. The “Business operation integration/BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) service” contributes to reduce the operational cost of non-core business processes and accelerates the business process reform. This results in the reduction of front office manpower which leads to the reinforcement of the sales performance. This paper introduces the “business operation integration/BPO service” and NEC’s approach to business operation integration solutions.

OIKAWA Noriko

The evolution of cloud technology has led to a rapid expansion of the use of the cloud in enterprise systems. SaaS model services have previously been used in the non-mission critical domain such as in groupware. However, they are now expected to spread rapidly as the adopted model of enterprise mission critical systems.NEC has released “EXPLANNER for SaaS” by leading its competitors in developing high security and convenient administrative systems offering low cost and high speed that are required to support enterprises. This paper introduces the innovative approach of NEC that is expected to change the focus of enterprise mission critical systems in the future.

Cloud-oriented Service Platform Solutions/SaaS platform services & supporting technologies

KAWAI Toshiya ・TAKANASHI Hiroshi

With recognition of the cloud computing, SaaS and PaaS have been increasing and the need to incorporate these technologies in business operating systems has also been increasing. This paper introduces the “SaaS platform service,” which is a PaaS that provides the functions required for the development of SaaS applications for business systems (authentication, user management, E-mail distribution, service linkages etc.) and for business development frameworks. The SaaS platform service makes it possible to improve development efficiency and reduce the operation costs as well as implementing hybrid business systems in which ownership and usage are well balanced. NEC offers the SaaS platform service as “RIACUBE/SP,” which is a common platform of cloud oriented service platform solutions.

KOBAYASHI Shigenori ・KOIZUMI Ken

In order to provide multiple service user enterprises (tenants) with applications as services it is necessary to reduce the service provision costs by the efficient use of available resources. For this purpose, every application must have a multitenancy, with which a single application can handle multiple tenants. This paper describes a technique of multitenant application development that makes use of the multitenancy development support function provided by SDE (SystemDirector Enterprise).

SHIMANO Shigehiro ・ADACHI Tatsumi ・KAMON Kazumi ・KOYAMA Kazuya

Cloud computing is required to implement services that match user needs quickly and safely by making use of various services from the cloud. This paper describes the features of the “Open Service Repository/Enterprise Gateway,” which is the mashup platform of NEC for enabling both the above and the services and solutions that are led from this platform.

Cloud-oriented Service Platform Solutions/IT platform services & supporting technologies

WATANABE Shou ・KUSAKAWA Naoki

In March 2008, NEC launched “RIACUBE,” a shared IT platform service for use in construction of the cloud-oriented data center platform. RIACUBE is a shared IT platform service that has been developed using an advanced data center platform and product technologies and is based on experience gained in the diverse outsourcing operations of NEC. This paper introduces the background of the RIACUBE development, development policy, functions, features and future deployment plans.

OGATA Hideyuki ・ARAMAKI Shinichi ・ITOU Eiichi ・ITOU Masaya ・KUNITOMO Shigeto

The “cloud-oriented data center platform” is the foundation for the provision of all NEC’s cloud services, including SaaS and the consortium center services. This paper introduces advantages and features for the customer including technological ones that are based on NEC’s acquired knowledge and expertise.This paper also describes the service deployment strategies that are planned for inside as well as outside Japan.

KATOU Masayuki

The trend toward reductions in IT investments due to the current economic climate has tended to focus our attention on cloud computing because it does not require initial capital investment. Nevertheless, even in the cloud environment, the needs of business system infrastructures are essentially the same. The WebOTX operational history extends over more than a decade as a service execution platform that can effectively execute business systems. This paper describes its main features of high reliability and operability, together with a description of the function enhancements that are featured in the latest version.

KATO Kiyoshi ・NISHIMURA Teruo ・KATSUMI Junichi

Optimization of IT costs and the “cloud computing service” that is expected to deal quickly and flexibly with changes in future business procedures are currently attracting attention. This paper introduces the requirements of the data center operations management methods that form the foundation for the use by enterprises of cloud services. It also introduces a method of data center implementation using “MasterScope,” integrated operations management software provided by NEC. This method is particularly helpful for providing a performance analysis technique that is a key point in supporting the stable provision of services by minimizing system downtime. This paper also introduces the latest technologies for solving issues resulting from “silent faults” that are difficult to solve using traditional technologies.

Key technologies supporting cloud-oriented service platform/IT infrastructures

SUZUKI Kumiko ・MATSUMOTO Shintaro ・YOSHIZAWA Kentarou ・OCHI Ichiro ・
SHIMADA Hiroshi ・KOGUCHI Kazuto

This paper introduces the Cloud Platform Suite product packages consisting of innovative cloud computing platforms. These include servers, storages, net work devices, software for their integrated management and basic building services for use in creating a cloud environment easily and quickly. It also describes the development of products designed to serve the “REAL IT PLATFORM G2” concept.

ISHIHARA Hirokazu ・TAKIYANAGI Masumi ・SADANO Shogo

Under the conditions of the current economic crisis, enterprises are expecting business innovations and efficiency improvements via IT systems and cloud computing that emphasizes use rather than ownership is enjoying increasing popularity.The issues accompanying cloud computing, particularly storage at the data center system, include the rapid increase in the data quantity, management complications and the serious effects of operations shutdowns. This paper discusses the “iStorage D Series,” which offers a solution to the above issues.

NISHIHARA Motoo ・IWATA Atsushi ・YUN Su-hun ・WATANABE Hiroyuki ・
IIJIMA Akio ・KANOH Toshiyuki

Network virtualization, network programmability, and integration technology of network and computer resource are key technologies for creating and operating a cloud computing. The “ProgrammableFlow” solution, including all required features mentioned above, integrates the network resource and IT resource, hereby enabling implementation of a cloud-oriented data center with more flexibility and lower cost, and enabling the data center to be continuously developed and improved according to the demand of new functions or scale expansion.

Platform to support the cloud computing services of telecommunication carriers

SUGATA Ken ・MIYASAKA Nobutaka ・YAMADA Kenji

The era of cloud computing has begun, and telecommunication carriers, which are important customers of NEC Group, are looking for opportunities to enter the cloud computing business in order to secure new income sources. Advanced telecommunication carriers, such as Telefonica, have already begun to offer these services. For such carriers, NEC is the only vendor which can offer both IT and network solutions while understanding the differences and synergies of both technologies. NEC is also a business partner that can provide comprehensive consulting solutions in order to contribute to the success of telecommunication carriers who move their business to the cloud.

KATA Kouji ・NAKAYAMA Yoshitaro ・SEKI Tadashi

Communication carriers (fixed line and mobile) believe that the unified management of the devices connected to their networks is the key to realize the “Carrier Cloud.” New ubiquitous society is realized, allowing secure and reliable use and combination of information on a network. This paper introduces an M2M (machine to machine) service platform to support the Carrier Cloud service.

ITO Kazuhiro ・NISHIDE Toshihiro ・KAWAKAMI Keizo

Enterprise companies are continuously challenging to adopt the ever-changing business environment. One of the solutions for enterprises is the innovation of IT system. The cloud data centers where IT systems can be used as services presents a significant evolution for the enterprise, and the need of cloud data centers is increasing more and more. Communication service providers which now start business on cloud data center services for enterprises need to provide services in a timely manner. This paper describes “NetCracker,” the solution products to realize the integrated operations of cloud data centers and to provide the services as quickly as possible.

Personal Cloud

KAMBA Tomonari ・ENDO Yukio

This paper introduces NEC’s challenging achievement “Personal Cloud”, which is a strategic vision of BIGLOBE. We are promoting the development of “Cloud Device” that integrates various terminals, telecommunications and services, as well as the development of “Application/Contents Market” that collects various services on the Internet. The service platform to support them will be capable of flexibly handling the increasingly large amount of accesses. To achieve this, we have deployed an architecture with scale-out configuration using open source software for the platform.

R&D supporting future cloud computing infrastructure technologies

SHIMAMURA Hisashi ・SOEJIMA Kenji ・KURODA Takayuki ・NISHIMURA Shoji

In achieving a SaaS-type cloud computing that will contain applications for multiple tenants, the density of containing tenants per infrastructure greatly affects the costs for providing services.This paper introduces the fine-grained application flow control technology that maximizes the density of containing tenants through letting the tenants share applications and then separating the tenants from each other for individual processes.

SHIMONISHI Hideyuki

The OpenFlow technology that can control the switch function from an external control server is beginning to attract attention. We offer a method that builds a virtual infrastructure by creating a virtualized control plane on this control server. This paper describes the architecture of the overall virtual infrastructure and the network operating system as the control server integration platform.

HAYASHI Takeo ・UENO Hiroshi

As communication uses broader bandwidths and communication needs become diversified, a wide variety of equipment is introduced into network infrastructures. In the cloud computing environment, it is essential to support services that frequently occur and the changing requirements. The dynamic reconfiguration technology realizes the network nodes with excellent performance scalability and functional scalability supporting the cloud computing environment. Further, this technology is also applicable to the middlebox virtualization enabling performance scale-out and system optimization.

OGAWA Ryuichi ・MAENO Yoshiharu ・NAKAE Masayuki

In the virtual server integrated environment, users from different organizations must share resources correctly via various types of software, so illegal access and information leak will be prevented in advance. In the cloud computing environment where dynamic placement of resources and creation/deletion of services occur frequently, however, managing and setting access control correctly is a large burden to the operation. To solve this issue, we have developed the integrated access control management technology supporting multi-layer and multi-vendor software. This paper introduces the overview of the technology developed and the proposal for its international standardization.

DEMPO Hiroshi ・KAMI Nobuharu ・TAKEMURA Toshinori ・YANAGISAWA Mitsuru

As the cloud computing environment spreads, importance of IT/network resource operation increases. For example, swiftness of configuration changes and flexibility of resource deployment are required. Therefore, this research and development has proceeded with research on the new autonomic operation control information network architecture, route information sharing technique, and virtualization equipment profiling technology. By interlocking these mutually, realization of the autonomic operation control infrastructure in the cloud computing environment is aimed.