TOKYO, Japan — NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), the ICT solutions and international communications company within the NTT Group (TKO:9432), announced today that it held its 15^th annual Arcstar Carrier Forum 2018, an international conference that was attended by global partner carriers and customers of NTT Com on September 13 and 14.

Carriers offering local and regional networks in more than 190 countries joined the forum to discuss how to support the evolving needs of customers in the digital economy as well as improve the quality and performance of global network services.

Regarding the ongoing shift to software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN), the customer participants explained their expectations for SD-WAN, based on which NTT Com and its partner carriers discussed transformations needed on the provider side to support the shift. After two days of discussion, NTT Com and the other carriers agreed on an action plan to collaborate on advancing such transformations and reaffirm NTT Com's commitment to shape the discussion with our partners in support of the evolving global business needs of our customers.

The agenda covered the following:

• Industry trends and NTT Com initiatives concerning SD-WAN
• Customer presentation by Michael Lee, Managing Director, IT Department, Mizuho Americas LLC, followed by a panel discussion involving customers, carriers and NTT Com
• Best practices and case studies ("Kaizen Olympics") presented by partner carriers and NTT Com
• Awards ceremony to recognize carriers that achieved outstanding performance

In his presentation, Mr. Lee said: "NTT Communications is supporting critical infrastructure for the Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG) worldwide. MHFG has more than 800 sites in Japan and 120 sites worldwide. It provided important financial services to individual and corporations through social infrastructure. In many sites, NTT Com provided Data Center Facilities and Arcstar Global Network services to Mizuho with 7 x 24 services.

In the financial industry, providing nonstop services to individuals and corporations is crucial, so NTT Com's data center and network communication services are critical infrastructure for our business, because any failure could cause critical business interruption.

Therefore, reliability, quality and quick response to these services is mandatory. Arcstar Carrier Forum is a valuable channel for learning about NTT Com and its partner carriers' latest services and technologies. Two-way communication enables us to mutually recognize MHFG's business needs and NTT Com's available services."

About NTT Communications

NTT Communications solves the world’s technology challenges by helping enterprises overcome complexity and risk in their ICT environments with managed IT infrastructure solutions. These solutions are backed by our worldwide infrastructure, including industry leading, global tier-1 public and private networks reaching over 190 countries/regions, and more than 400,000m² of the world’s most advanced data center facilities. Our global professional services teams provide consultation and architecture for the resiliency and security required for your business success, and our scale and global capabilities are unsurpassed. Combined with NTT Data, NTT Security, NTT DOCOMO and Dimension Data, we are NTT Group.
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