Santen chooses NTT Communications’ Hybrid-cloud ICT infrastructure for global growth

NTT Communications Corporation has constructed an ICT backbone and information system that Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Santen) will use as core ICT infrastructure to support its goal of becoming one of the world’s top three providers of medicines for prescription ophthalmic solutions. The hybrid-cloud environment combines NTT Com’s branded services for cloud, data center and network, which are globally centralized for efficient system management and supported with a globalized multilingual help desk for Santen employees.

The centralized hybrid-cloud infrastructure is enabling Santen to optimize ICT resources and costs, respond more flexibly to global business-development needs, enhance global governance and strengthen business continuity.

Hybrid clouding started in Japan in January and will be expanded to the company’s EU and USA bases. Services for system management and support were first deployed at Santen’s EU bases last October and will be expanded to the company’s Japanese and USA bases.

Background
Santen, a leading ophthalmic pharmaceutical company for Japanese market, has subsidiaries in 18 countries. Under its long-term strategic vision, the company plans to grow as a specialized pharmaceutical company with a major global presence by 2020. Its goal is to become the No. 1 prescription ophthalmic solution business in both Japan and Asia and one of the top three worldwide. To achieve this goal, Santen is now expanding its business in European and Asian markets at an accelerated pace.

Previously, Santen deployed mainly on-premises ICT systems that varied by geographical regions. More recently, it has urgently sought to integrate these systems on a global level, including through cloud solutions, to standardize operations and ensure business continuity for global business expansion.

New Global System Constructed by NTT Com
• Scalable hybrid-cloud environment for fast responses to changing needs
NTT Com’s highly scalable hybrid-cloud environment combines the company’s Enterprise Cloud service and Nexcenter data center service to integrate Santen’s global backbone and information systems. In addition, Santen’s global network configuration has been optimized with NTT Com’s Arcstar Universal One network service. The new ICT environment gives Santen greater flexibility to respond to changes in the global business environment.
• Global back-up and 24/7 management for business continuity
NTT Com established a global disaster-recovery environment to back up beyond regions for data and important systems, such as the backbone system. Early recovery is assured in the event that a system failure ever occurs. Business continuity also is assured, thanks to the NTT Com Global Service Operations Center’s centralized, 24/7 monitoring and maintenance of Santen’s global ICT system.
• Multilingual user support for Santen employees
NTT Com maintains a global help desk to provide Santen employees with multilingual support in Japanese, English, French, German, Finnish and other languages. The desk capably handles inquiries regarding IT systems and devices, troubleshooting and more.

According to Noriaki Yamamoto, Santen’s Corporate Officer, CIO and Head of Information Systems Division, "We wanted to integrate and introduce cloud technologies for Santen’s regionally divergent ICT systems, aiming to build an ICT infrastructure that would make us more responsive to our global business environment. After careful consideration, we choose NTT Com because of its ability to provide global ICT infrastructure with its cloud, data center and network services. We also valued the high quality of its global customer service and support."

"Initially, we used the help desk service for about 600 employees in seven EU countries and experienced an impressive 80% first-call resolution for inquiries. Also, we have gained flexible use of our ICT resources by integrating about 300 backbone and information servers in Japan through NTT Com’s hybrid-cloud environment in January. In one case, for example, we succeeded in maintaining business continuity by instantly expanding Enterprise Cloud compute resources when a server was overloaded due to a mail system upgrade."

"We believe that our new ICT infrastructure, by integrating our ICT system and adding cloud capability in our European and U.S. regions, enables us to respond faster to our global business needs. We will now use our global ICT base built by NTT Com to support Santen’s journey toward becoming the No. 1 provider of prescription ophthalmic solutions in Japan and Asia, and one of the top three worldwide."