Happy New Year!

First, I would like to express my deep appreciation to each of you for your daily support of the NTT Communications Group.

In April of last year, we announced a new business plan, “Vision 2020,” for the NTT Communications Group. By offering innovative services and cutting edge technologies, we will carry out this vision as expressed in our ideal of ‘Transform, Transcend.’ These services and technologies will dramatically evolve and dynamically transform business, markets, and society. They will create new value that exceeds expectations. By transcending the boundaries that limit people, they will realize a seamlessly-connected world.

In 2016, we began to transform our own company, with a view toward achieving “Vision 2020.”

As a first step in offering IoT Platform Services in a secure, one-stop IoT environment, we began offering a factory management package from May of last year. We have continued to expand our lineup since then. Furthermore, with “corevo™,” an AI technology developed by the NTT Group, we conducted several joint experiments with customers. In these experiments we were able to generate concrete results toward the business transformation of these customers through the analysis of Big Data they hold. We have been selling the AI “Communication Engine COTOHA™” since October 2016. This communication engine is based on corevo™ technology, and it can talk interactively in natural Japanese.

In another 2016 initiative, in March we significantly strengthened our “Enterprise Cloud.” This was done in conjunction with the strengthening of our ICT platform, which we had been focusing on until then. We created a cloud environment that realizes integrated management of an ICT platform that is “secure and reliable” as well as “flexible and agile.” In 2016 we began providing services from new data centers we set up in Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. We also undertook further construction of new data centers in the United States.

As a result of these activities, we have been continuing to contribute to the transformation of our customers’ businesses. For example, we have concluded a technology partnership with McLaren Honda for support of its F1 racing cars. Our technical support includes collecting real-time data from McLaren Honda’s F1 racing cars and then providing solutions that deliver this data rapidly and securely to engineers at its technology center.

This year in the NTT Communications Group we will continue our own transformation. We will also strive to move our customers toward realizing our ‘Transform, Transcend’ ideal by helping them to radically change and renovate their own businesses.

As a major initiative this year, we will develop a sequence of key technologies that realize a more flexible and agile ICT, and we will also create a series of new services such as SD-WAN and SD-Exchange that harness Software Defined technology. In addition, we plan to further expand our B2B2X-style of business collaboration, challenge new businesses with our customers, and continue to create new values. We will also continue strengthening and reliably operating our infrastructure for the future, through the construction of new data centers and the launch of new submarine-cable laying ship.

Finally, I would like to extend my New Year’s greetings to all of you and wish you a wonderful year to come.