Demand for distributed data centers has been rising nationwide following the Great East Japan Earthquake in March of this year, and Sojitz is responding to this demand by expanding its data center business. Data centers form key infrastructure in information and communications technology (ICT) fields. As the first step, Nissho Electronics Corporation, a Sojitz subsidiary that plays a central role in the ICT business, established a data center in Dojima, Osaka City and launched services for enterprises at the end of September.

Sojitz’s IT Business Unit has positioned the expansion of data centers and related services as one of the growth strategies in the ICT field. In the data center business, Sakura Internet Inc., Sojitz group company, offers hosting and housing services to Internet businesses and individuals, but Nissho Electronics has strengths in ICT infrastructure solutions for enterprises and will enter the data center business for enterprises such as manufacturing, retail, and wholesale firms as well as system integrators by making use of Sakura Internet’s data center infrastructure.

The intra-group collaboration will allow Sakura Internet to steadily expand its data center business for Internet businesses and individuals, and Nissho Electronics to strengthen its data center business for enterprises (including cloud computing applications). This will enable the Sojitz group to respond to the data center service needs of a broad spectrum of customers.

　The Great East Japan Earthquake affected approximately 20% of corporate systems nationwide. According to reports, approximately 60% of those experienced power or network outages, and a further 20% experienced suspension of service applications (based on investigations by a private research company). Following the earthquake, demand rose for business continuity planning and disaster recovery services as well as private cloud services that enable businesses to build internal systems using cloud computing. Data centers are concentrated in the Tokyo region, an area where concerns about electric power shortages are high, and as a result, there is growing interest in regional distribution of data centers.

Nissho Electronics’ will not only perform hosting through rental of servers and networks and operation of applications, it will provide one-stop services including the provision of solutions that combine various ICT hardware and integration of data center services such as system operation and monitoring. Nissho Electronics will also meet the diverse needs by developing services for relocating on-premise IT environments maintained and operated using in-house information systems to data centers and migrating those operations to cloud environments, using its strength and enterprise-oriented business including sale of ICT-related hardware and provision of solutions. Nissho Electronics plans to develop business not only in the Kansai region, but also in Hokkaido, the Tokyo Metropolitan region, and the Chubu region.

The Sojitz group is working to expand the regionally-distributed data center business by providing high-quality and high energy efficiency and will provide data center maintenance, operation, and management services that customers can use with confidence. The group will also cooperate with Sojitz Systems Corporation, a systems integrator business based in Tokyo, to develop the business continuity planning and disaster recovery service and cloud service businesses using data centers.

Reference Information

Main Data Center Services (as of September 2011; services will be steadily expanded)

• Housing services

• Internet connectivity services

• System operation and monitoring services

• Managed hosting services

• Remote data storage services

Main System Integration Services

• ICT infrastructure development

• ICT infrastructure migration

• P2V relocation

• Cloud infrastructure development