Customer Success Story
HITACHI
Hitachi Consolidates Its Communications with BT Infonet
Hitachi, Ltd. (Hitachi) headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1999 (ended March 31, 2000) consolidated sales of 8,001 billion yen (U.S. $75.5 billion). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products, and power and industrial equipment. Hitachi has 1,000 subsidiaries, including nearly 300 overseas corporations.
Hitachi has had a presence in the U.S. since 1959. There are currently 75 Hitachi companies in North America. Hitachi America, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, manufactures and markets a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, semiconductors, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout the U.S. Hitachi America has more than 6,000 employees in six divisions and nine subsidiaries around the country.
Building Quality Products
Since its formation in 1962, Hitachi's Enterprise Server Division (ESD), formerly known as Kanagawa Works, has played a central role in its computer business. This division has been responsible for developing and manufacturing an array of information processing products - from supercomputers to mainframes, and servers to network equipment.
As these high-performance computers have been developed, they have found increasing application in many diverse scientific and engineering areas. Structural analysis, fluid dynamics, weather prediction, environmental modelling, molecular design, image processing and medical analysis are just a few examples of areas that call for performance that exceeds either traditional vector supercomputers or parallel computers. To address these needs, Hitachi has developed the Super Technical Server Hitachi SR8000 Series.
Seiji Suzuki is the supervisor for the High Performance Computing Business Department at ESD. He is responsible for overseeing the activities surrounding the servers. In promoting the SR8000 Series, Suzuki develops and maintains relationships with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) located mainly in Japan, Europe and the U.S. These ISVs develop special applications that run on these high-end computing platforms.
Finding Faster, More Reliable Access
To access the Hitachi servers, some of Hitachi's ISVs use a dedicated line between themselves and the company. However, they soon discovered that dedicated lines are very expensive, fairly inflexible and take months to implement. This led Suzuki's group to look for alternatives.
One of the major criteria of concern was security. The links between Hitachi and the ISVs cannot be compromised. In addition, installing a dedicated line is both an expensive and time consuming process, often taking three months for the installation which in turn causes projects to be delayed.
Because of the worldwide locations of the ISVs, Suzuki's team was managing three distinct communications vendors - one for Europe, a second for Japan and the third for the U.S. Managing these vendors across time zones also added to Suzuki's challenge. "If we had a problem and I could not connect with the vendor easily, we experienced delays. What we wanted was to be able to contact one vendor in our same time zone and have that vendor resolve the problems," Suzuki remarks. In-country support became the second criteria.
Suzuki's team solicited and evaluated proposals over a period of one year - while waiting for a three-year contract with one of the communications vendors, which did not have in-country management services, to expire. "We planned BT Infonet's implementation as soon as that agreement expired. We wanted to have a local vendor, with in-country management and a worldwide network, which is why we selected BT Infonet," Suzuki stated.
A One Month ROI Payback
Since BT Infonet has started providing in-country support and managing Hitachi's network, Suzuki's global communications have become much simpler. BT Infonet is providing dedicated and secure access for the ISVs, local customer service and one invoice. He likes not having three invoices in three different currencies with three different issue dates. And all at a lower cost. Managing three vendors made it difficult for Suzuki to budget and pay on time. "Now we have one invoice, it is easier for us to budget and to manage," he says.
Suzuki has found BT Infonet to be very responsive in helping him mitigate time zone issues. Instead of having three people manage the vendor relationships, he can work directly with BT Infonet, allowing his staff to concentrate on other aspects of managing the servers. "Because of shorter implementation times and reduced costs, I can concentrate on the other things that are more important to running the business. Implementing our network took three months; we reduced our running costs by one third and had a payback in less than one month. We think BT Infonet is the best," he concludes.