Japan's NTT Com goes on global data center offensive

IDG News Service - NTT Communications, the IT arm of Japan's main telecommunications operator, is aggressively expanding its data center operations outside the country as part of a push to offer its cloud-hosting services worldwide.

The company has opened new data centers in Singapore, the U.K., and in Virginia and California in the U.S., it said Wednesday. It plans to open three more in Australia, Malaysia and Thailand next month, in addition to its existing facilities in Japan and Hong Kong.

NTT Com is a subsidiary of massive NTT in Japan, and has traditionally handled the telecommunications company's infrastructure and long-distance operations. NTT Com is a major operator of data centers in Japan, and is making a push to bring its technical knowledge abroad.

The company is pushing its "Enterprise Cloud" platform, launched last year, which stresses replacing physical servers with virtual machines. NTT Com has been able to leverage its reputation and deep industry connections at home, and hopes to replicate that success abroad.

The company says that its cloud service was the first to incorporate the OpenFlow protocol, which allows network paths and settings to be determined by software.

OpenFlow is an open standard backed by the Open Networking Foundation, which was launched in 2011 by industry heavyweights including Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The standard is also increasingly supported by hardware makers, including Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.

NTT Com cut server numbers for several of its clients, shifting the load to its cloud hosting. NTT Com parent NTT is also the parent company of NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile operator.