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Open Network Innovation in the 5G Era DIGITAL REPORT 2021
DIGITAL REPORT 2022
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IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
NTT DATA: Open Network Innovation in the 5G Era
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NTT DATA CORP
New all-photonics technology and acceleration of open network standards will propel NTT DATA’s global vision for 5G solutions in the B2B market
N
TT DATA is Japan’s second sister company NTT DOCOMO launched a largest provider of IT services proof-of-concept, successfully transmitting by market share, and one of 4k and 8k video data over a 5G connection the nation’s most influential to a Shinkansen bullet train travelling at technology firms. A 1988 360km/h – with no handover issues. offshoot from parent company NTT Group From a consumer perspective, it is a – which, in 2021, exceeded revenues of value-added benefit to travelling on board US$100bn – it has spearheaded innovations Japan’s iconic high-speed trains. But that have established Japan’s position as a Yasuhiro Higashiyama, NTT DATA Japan’s global leader in technological convenience Head of Global Business, Telecom and Utility and security, from the introduction of smart Sector, believes there are wider implications cards to virtual shopping malls. in leveraging 5G to unlock new use cases In 2018, NTT R&D published a thesis across a vast array of B2B environments. in Nature Photonics outlining its latest “In the 5G era, telecoms should transform innovation: a groundbreaking vision for themselves, not just as a voice and data the future of communications technology service provider, but as a solutions provider called the Innovative Optical and Wireless to the B2B market, from IoT and automated Network (IOWN). It is a global initiative factories, to extended reality healthcare of two parts that will power NTT DATA’s and the burgeoning automated vehicle global expansion: the first is collaboratively ecosystem,” he says. developing and establishing a global infrastructure standard as a The All-Photonics Future proponent of Open Radio NTT R&D’s major innovation Access Networks (Open RAN) is the all-photonics network, technologies; the second a “new-generation of is the introduction of allcomputing chips, which photonics technology that will cause lower power will bring greater speed consumption than existing to the network, while technology, and high simultaneously reducing performance”, according energy consumption. to Higashiyama. Over the past four years, The all-photonics YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA NTT DATA has been working technology is a complex HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, on commercialising the engineering achievement, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, vision. In February 2021, its NTT DATA JAPAN and Higashiyama admits
“Our success and our clients’ success in 5G will come from the B2B market”
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Yasuhiro Higashiyama, Head of Global Business, Telecom & Utility Sector
NTT DATA CORP
“In the 5G era, NTT DATA needs to strengthen our crossindustry activity”
the technical details are By leveraging all-photonics difficult to comprehend; the technology, NTT DATA result is, however, simple in forecasts a 100x reduction concept. “At the moment, in energy consumption. everything in the current Collaborating with Fujitsu infrastructure is driven by to develop a hyper-energy electricity,” Higashiyama says. exchange network and IT “Inside data centres, even infrastructure, NTT R&D those for fibre networks, a lot is commercialising the of energy is expended. That’s technology for communication because we need to convert service providers (CSPs). all the optical ‘photonic’ Without this dramatic decrease signals into an electric signal, in energy consumption, YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA compute something, and Higashiyama believes that HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, convert the signal again from current infrastructure will no NTT DATA JAPAN electronic back to photonic. longer be sustainable in as It is not efficient and it little as three years’ time. requires an enormous amount of energy. “Green technology is key to our But in the all-photonics future, you no longer success. As network traffic will continue to need to convert the signal. The technology exponentially grow roughly 20-30% year-onallows the signal to flow between destinations year, the network will require twice as much seamlessly, and therefore dramatically cuts energy as it currently does within the next energy consumption.” three to five years,” he says. “That growth will
NTT DATA Corporate movie 2021
NTT DATA CORP
continue, and will not be sustainable. If we are successful in delivering the new greenenergy exchange technologies, it will help our business, will bring new opportunities globally in green markets, and will help our clients also deliver on their own sustainability commitments. That’s why we are investing a lot in these technologies.” Wholesale transformation of infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive, but NTT’s all-photonics tech has one additional benefit: it is backwards compatible. “We can adopt this technology inside existing computing infrastructure,” Higashiyama says. “If your computer has a motherboard, it is compatible with the all-photonics network and this technology. We can transmit the signal fully photonically.”
Open RAN is Key NTT group will begin deploying all-photonics technology in its domestic market by 2025. But a wider rollout is contingent upon the development of Open RAN. Last year, NTT DOCOMO launched its 5G Open RAN ecosystem, the O-RAN Alliance. Formed of 12 global vendors – including Fujitsu, Mavenir, Intel K.K, Dell Technologies
YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA TITLE: H EAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR
139,700
COMPANY: NTT DATA JAPAN
Employees as of March 2021
Revenue as of March 2021
1988
Year founded
EXECUTIVE BIO
2,897.0bn yen
LOCATION: TOKYO, JAPAN Yasuhiro has 20 years of experience in the IT industry as an expert of CMT, leading global 5G innovations around the world with strong focus on Open network and cloud-native technologies. Until 2020, he was based in London as a leader of Global Telecom and managed Global accounts in Europe and LatAm. He completed a Master of Science course at the University of Tokyo, majoring in quantum computing, and is looking forward to translating his studies into reality this decade.
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NTT DATA CORP
Japan, and Qualcomm Technologies – the alliance will jointly work towards promoting industrial innovations together, accelerating the development of Open RAN to help enable flexible network deployment. "Our home market is Japan, but now we have a strong footprint in Europe, LatAm and other major markets where we are now strongly focusing on Open RAN adoption,” Higashiyama says. “This, 10
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along with vRAN technologies, which we are developing in partnership with Mavenir, are the prerequisites for our vision. We need to transform the legacy infrastructure into an open network. “We are heavily investing in cloud-native and open source-based IT infrastructure,” Higashiyama adds. “NTT DATA and DOCOMO are jointly developing an open source-based service management operations system. We are also developing
“We need to transform the legacy infrastructure into an open network” YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, NTT DATA JAPAN
autonomous operation systems for Open RAN together with Fujitsu and DOCOMO." By 2025, NTT DATA expects this open network to account for a major share of the market. “At the moment mobile operators such as Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson dominate the network,” Higashiyama says. “But in our view, we expect that over the next three to five years, most of the market will be an open network.”
NTT DATA CORP
“Green technology is key to our success”
B2B is The Future The company’s partnership As the 5G era matures, a shift in with Mavenir is a good example technology will also drive a new of this, Higashiyama adds: focus on B2B markets for NTT “Mavenir can deliver cloudDATA and the wider telecoms native vRAN solutions, but in industry. “Our success and the B2B market, a non telco our clients’ success in 5G will client requires a full-stack come from the B2B market,” solution. On top of the private YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA Higashiyama says. “CSPs in mobile network, the client will HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, the B2B market will provide want to deploy some use-case NTT DATA JAPAN not just connectivity, but applications. Mavenir cannot also additional value-added provide that, but as a system services on top of that infrastructure.” integrated and IT services specialists, NTT It will also require a more collaborative DATA is good at providing those solutions. mindset and the forging of partnerships – So through our partnership, we can deliver approaches that Higashiyama admits the that full-stack solution to all industries.” company has historically not engaged in. Many other collaborative programmes “But now, in the 5G era, we need to are already underway. In LatAm, NTT DATA strengthen our cross-industry activity.” partnered with Facebook and Telefonica,
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delivering the lean operations with open source technologies to bring low-cost mobile connection to rural areas of Peru. In more mature markets, such as Europe, the company is teaming with industry leaders to set standards for autonomous and connected vehicles, among other emerging technologies. “In the near future, there will be more cars connected to the network, and it will be very important to have a global standard for navigation technologies,” Higashiyama
says. “Cars will be connected not just for voice and content, but for cloud services, and those services are not necessarily standardised across the globe. Vodafone and NTT DATA are creating the standard for 5G roaming across Europe, where we are providing standardised compliance solutions to CSPs.” Manufacturing industries, particularly the automotive sector, will be a major driver of NTT DATA’s mid-term growth, Higashiyama says. In Germany, the company is working together with BMW and other Tier www.nttdata.com
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NTT DATA CORP
1 suppliers to establish industry standards for automated parking solutions. “We provide what we call the Campus Network,” Higashiyama says. “Together with network and AI-based solutions and video sensors, businesses can use this form of autonomous driving within their own localised factories and logistics operations. Meanwhile, consumers can enjoy this convenience in retail locations, for example.” Roadmap for the Future NTT DATA’s long-term vision is a 10-year plan that begins with standardisation, and then culminates in the creation and maturation of markets and technologies that have yet to be envisioned. Over the next two years, NTT Group will begin prototyping new all-photonics devices, which will be deployed in Japanese domestic infrastructure from 2025. “By 2030, we’d like to have a more global impact, and we hope this technology will be more popular and have a tangible market share,” says Higashiyama. But there will be competition. “I understand that other IT giants and some other hyperscalers have similar views as ours for the future, and are starting to develop their own technology,” says Higashiyama. "We will compete with those other organisations in technological advancement. But our competitive advantages are two-fold. NTT DATA is a telco down to our very DNA, and we have a long history of contributing to society – not just for our own business. We can differentiate ourselves by extending our values to benefit society, and our competence in telecoms technology.”
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