Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd.

Global network infrastructure was crucial for implementing company's growth strategies

Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd. is a pioneer of prefab housing. Daiwa House aims to support people's lives, not only through their core business of detached single-family homes but recently through the development of rental housing and commercial facilities, and even home care services and lifestyle-supporting robots.

Daiwa House, which will celebrate its 60 years anniversary in 2015, has established the management strategies of promoting global business development and boosting group partnerships to achieve further growth and offer superb value-added products to meet diverse needs. Daiwa House is particularly focusing on China, America, Australia, and Taiwan, as well as emerging economies such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

As the IT system supports these management strategies, Daiwa House makes advanced use of the latest technologies. Currently, the company uses systems like SAP at a centralized data center in Japan. All their offices, in Japan and overseas, need to access it, so the infrastructure connecting them is a lifeline for their business.

However, issues had started to arise." Especially recently, with more cloud utilization, more CAD use and more teleconferencing, the amount of image, video, and voice data being exchanged had really ballooned," says Mr. Kyoji Kato of Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd.

The company instituted a priority control between core systems data and image, video and voice data in order to eliminate any delay in mission-critical data such as accounting information, but was not able to keep pace with the rapid expansion of traffic, resulting in delays even in accounting while less important things like audio quality could not be assured either.

Leveraged NTT Com's globally integrated network to connect 300 offices around the world

In order to resolve this situation, Daiwa House began considering a new ICT infrastructure to seamlessly connect its 300 offices around the globe and ensure security, quality and reliability for both core and information systems. NTT Communications (NTT Com) and its network infrastructure including Arcstar Universal One was chosen as its partner.

"Considering our 5- and 10-year group strategies and our plans for foreign development, NTT Com was the only choice for us. Particularly when it comes to the seamless connection of domestic and overseas networks, we were sure we could rely on NTT Com's cutting-edge technology, low-latency network, and service track record," says Mr. Kato. Being able to have a one-stop source for phone and LAN lines and equipment was a big plus as well.

"Plus, with Arcstar Universal One, the core systems, information systems, communication systems (images and audio) and other segments can be divided as needed, and communications can be conducted without a hitch and without worrying about network layers of the head office, global offices, branches, sub-branches and group companies," adds Mr. Naoki Sakurai at Daiwa House.

Faster, smoother establishment of global offices
More responsive and flexible global operations

Daiwa House's new network for core, information and communication systems connected their 300 offices, as well as two off-shore offices, which were linked in through Arcstar Global IP-VPN. 5,000 mobile cards were issued, an integrated mobile network for the head office and group companies was set up, and a Wi-Fi network was established as well, all of which contributed to the major benefits reaped by the changes.

The biggest point was achieving a network infrastructure that boosts group partnerships. "Previously, when we would establish, integrate or reorganize offices, setting up the IT environment required starting from scratch, but now we have a designated process," says Mr. Kato. As a result, the time required to establish an overseas office is reduced, accelerating the pace of business. Additionally, their business continuity is assured by the secure and reliable network.

"Now, we don't get any complaints about delays, even at the busiest times. Being able to double our bandwidth at the same cost was a huge selling point for Arcstar Universal One. The simpler system also reduced maintenance and operational burdens," says Mr. Sakurai. "This is really a network environment that provides high cost performance."

Daiwa House will continue to promote its management strategies with the support of their new network. "We expect that NTT Com will continue to support our efforts by making proposals to utilize the latest trends in network technology, drawing us a road map to the future," says Mr. Kato in closing.