TOKYO, Japan — Kubota Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) announced today an agreement, effective immediately, to combine Kubota's infrastructure solutions for agriculture and water management, NTT's research and development capabilities, and ICT services from NTT Com and other NTT Group companies to enhance agricultural competitiveness and upgrade living standards.

Research and development will focus on creating agricultural solutions that enable farms to better visualize and manage their agricultural businesses, including through enhanced efficiency and automation, and water solutions that enable extra-efficient monitoring and management of water resources.

The solutions will variously incorporate advanced agricultural machinery, farm-support systems and water infrastructure from Kubota; global cloud and security services from NTT Com; wireless technologies, weather and map information and other ICT services from the NTT Group; artificial intelligence, including the corevo™ failure-detection system leveraging AI and IoT technologies developed by NTT for the Internet of Things and big data.

Kubota is accelerating its global businesses in the fields including agriculture machinery and water management under a business restructuring strategy named Global Major Brand Kubota. The company is strengthening its development of agricultural technologies and solutions, such as the Kubota Smart Agri System that leverages ICT for enhanced agricultural management.

NTT is enhancing its comprehensive capabilities as a value partner for customers by working with partners to develop ICT-based "Co-Innovation" initiatives. One of its new strategic business fields is agriculture, where it is partnering with other companies, including through the NTT Group Crossing Project.

NTT Com is helping customers with the digital transformations of their businesses. Specifically, NTT Com is optimizing their ICT environments with innovative solutions that incorporate global seamless services for clouds, colocation, networks, applications, security and managed ICT.

About Kubota Corporation

Kubota Corporation (TSE:6326) is one of Japan's leading manufacturers of a comprehensive range of machinery and other industrial and consumer products. Since 1890, Kubota Corporation has offered various products including farm equipment, engines, construction machinery, electronic equipped machinery, pipe-related products, environment-related products, and social infrastructure-related products to contribute to improve human lives and society. With broad product lineup and its unique comprehensive strength, Kubota Corporation presents in more than 110 countries and strives to solve the worldwide problems related to food, water and the environment, which are indispensable for human beings.

Please visit http://www.kubota-global.net/index.html for the latest news and more information.

About Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

NTT Group delivers advanced technology and innovative solutions in networking, software communications, and cloud computing that help transform businesses, governments and societies around the world.

NTT Group will deliver convenient, enriched and reliable services to support customers as a "Value Partner" that its customers will continue to select. Today, 80% of Fortune 100 companies rely on NTT Group as their business partner. NTT Group generates over $105 billion in annual revenues, has over 233 data centers and employs more than 240,000 professionals working in 88 countries.

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About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides consultancy, architecture, security and cloud services to optimize the information and communications technology (ICT) environments of enterprises. These offerings are backed by the company’s worldwide infrastructure, including the leading global tier-1 IP network, the Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching 196 countries/regions, and 140 secure data centers worldwide. NTT Communications’ solutions leverage the global resources of NTT Group companies including Dimension Data, NTT DOCOMO and NTT DATA.
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